Konoha no Mai
by Slavok
Summary: This is the sequel to Dance of the Hidden Leaves. As a Leaf shinobi, Kimimaro continues his journey of self discovery and in turn comes to terms with his own mortality. Up to the end of the Chunin exam. Slight Naruhina.
1. Watching in the Woods

Chapter 1

Konoha no Mai

_a/n Just in case you did not read the summary, this is a sequel to Dance of the Hidden Leaves. If you haven't read the first one, this story will make no sense whatsoever. I repeat, this is a sequel. I have no intention of going through a long tedious explanation of why Kimimaro is doing this or why Kabuto is doing that if the answer is in the first story I wrote. I do not own Naruto._

Whose woods these are I think I know.  
His house is in the village, though;  
He will not see me stopping here  
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

-Robert Frost

Four stone faces stared down at the humble village and the surrounding forest. Carved out of the mountainside, the greatest of Konoha's leaders remained engraved in human memory as though they were still, in their own way, looking out for the village they had loved and lead. But of course, that was just a pleasant fantasy. They had guarded the Hidden Leaf during their own lives, and that was more than anyone could ask of them. They had gone the way of the autumn leaves, and the four Hokages could do nothing more for their village.

Except for one of them.

The Third Hokage looked up at the chiseled mountainside, imagining the future, when the mountain would be full of the faces of the greatest shinobi of their time, and Sarutobi remembered the past, when there was only one. Because he was actually one of the few left who had known each of the village's great leaders personally. When he was a child, he had seen the First, who had forged a foundation of peace in the midst of a world of war and chaos. Sarutobi had spoken with the Second, who had trained him and had taught him the meaning of self sacrifice. And then there was the Fourth.

The Fourth Hokage, more than any of his predecessors, had been the epitome of the word "hero." In his life and death he had inspired those around him. Throughout his existence, he had emulated the sublime attributes of courage, determination, and, most of all, hope.

"He hoped the village would think of the boy as a hero," he said out loud.

"I know," said Iruka at his side. "It seems these days rather like a lack of foresight on his part."

"On the contrary, I think he had too much," the Third corrected. "If anyone had a lack of foresight, it was the village as a whole. Fear and hatred can do that to people, and I'm afraid the Fourth had precious little of either. He probably suspected how things would turn out, but that's the way of things. Gambles don't always pay off, but then again, sometimes they do."

And that indeed was true. It had been a gamble, a few years ago, when he had allowed the boy Kimimaro, who and come to the village, lost and alone, to join the ninja academy. It had been another gamble to allow an aspiring jounin, Kabuto, to become the sensei to a team of genin. His life was full of gambles, and yet...

"You have a point," Iruka admitted. "I worry about him sometimes, but Naruto seems happy enough."

"And, to not display favoritism, I'm sure you worry about all you're past academy students equally," the Third said with a smile.

"I try," he replied. "But surprisingly few academy students have ever managed to save my life."

"No," Sarutobi laughed. "I suppose they wouldn't."

"By the way, what was it that you wanted to see me about?"

"Ah yes! I forget myself. Iruka, I wanted to talk to you about the preparations for the upcoming chunin exam."

WWW

Kimimaro took one last look at his plants before shutting the door. He was pressed for time as it was, but the flower he was growing did not look well. It drooped lower and lower every day and its immaculate white petals had started to grey. Perhaps it was the lack of sunlight. The plant occupied the one windowsill of the lone window of his room, and as Kimimaro seldom bothered to turn the lights on when he was inside, his residence often had the appearance of a prison cell.

_Well, if it were any other way,_ he thought, finally closing the door,_ it wouldn't feel like home._ He smiled at the thought as he began walking toward the training ground, but he knew the light wasn't the problem. The flower was from a much wetter climate to the east, the Land of Water, which was, if only technically, Kimimaro's homeland. He could not neglect the plant for a few weeks at a time and expect it to flourish, and, as a shinobi of the Hidden Leaf, that often happened.

He barely paid attention to the hundreds who passed him on the road in the morning. Each one of them was an individual, he was told, but if half of them keeled over dead one day, he probably wouldn't even notice. Kimimaro found it difficult to think of them as anything other than a statistic. All of them were exactly the same.

But not Kimimaro. He was different, unique. In the whole village, in all the world, there were none like him among the living. The Kaguya clan, _his_ clan, was extinct. They had followed the path of the sword to the bitter end, and had left nothing behind except a scarred land that had already healed. Of that clan, he was the last. That left him with a sense of both solitude and satisfaction. In all the Hidden Leaf, there were none who truly understood him, and there were none whom he could truly understand.

The village's primary skill was with the kunai and the shuriken, and yet human life had acquired irrational value to the point of being sacred. Friends, enemies, even cowards could not be slain except by accident, if avoidable. To do otherwise was almost an act of dishonor. Similarly interesting was that the art of combat was recognized as a necessary skill, which it was, but nothing more. That it could be viewed as an art, as something beautiful, was something that few understood. But in truth, the only time Kimimaro's spirit was at peace was when his body was in combat, and whenever his body was at peace, his spirit was left in turmoil.

Such was the price of being a foreigner, but it was worth it. More important than the isolation was knowing that he was irreplaceable. He could do things that no one else could do; his gift to his village could _never_ be duplicated.

Kimimaro arrived on the training ground on time, but he was still the last one there. Kabuto-sensei glanced up when he heard him, and then turned back to the med-nin training he was giving HInata. Hinata didn't bother to look up, but she was probably the first one who saw him. She had a special bloodline, and with her eyes, she could read a book with her eyes closed. And then there was Naruto.

"I beat you," Naruto said immediately. A large grin covered half his face, not to scorn those he had defeated, but only to elevate himself as he stood, if only for a moment, infinitely content in the sublime light of victory.

"I wasn't racing you," Kimimaro reminded him.

Naruto paused for a moment. "Well, I still beat you." And his smile returned.

The boy was, by nature, childishly competitive. He strived to be the best at _everything_, and every waking moment was a chance to prove his worth. He constantly challenged those around him to see who could eat more, who could fall asleep faster, or, in this case, who could get to the training ground first, and would do so with or without his opponent's consent.

"Shall we get started then?" Kimimaro offered.

He grinned again, but this time it was one of savage hunger, of desire. If his face weren't otherwise dominated by an expression of pure obliviousness, it would almost have been frightening.

"This time," he shouted, "you're going down!"

Kimimaro almost laughed at the idea. "Every time I don't have you down at my feet within three minutes, I consider it a personal failure."

"Let's go!"

WWW

"What do you think that cloud looks like?"

"A cloud."

"Oh. Uh, how about that one?"

"I'd have to say that that one…also looks like a cloud."

"You know what?" said Sakura, irritated, "this has got to be the most _boring thing_ I have ever done. How can you waste your life doing this?"

Shikamaru rolled his head slightly to face her without getting up. "Passively," he replied. "Very passively."

Sakura got up and scanned the trees for some sign of the missing member of their team. "He's always late!" she complained. "Kakashi has got to be the most irresponsible jounin-sensei ever! And in half an hour or so when he finally _does_ get here, he's going to say something like," she deepened her voice, "'Sorry about that. I was on my way here, but then a blind man dropped his cane and it got kicked down a flight of stairs, so I had to help,' or something even more ridiculous."

"Quit complaining," growled Sasuke from the shade of the tree he was sitting under. "It won't help him get here any faster."

Sakura sat down again in the grass. "Why is he always late?"

WWW

It was never easy to focus on a dead fish. It was harder still with people trying to kill each other right next to you.

"Remember," Kabuto said to his aspiring med-nin student. "The purpose of this exercise isn't to bring this fish to life, it's just to make it move. Shock the nerves to stimulate the muscles. That's all there is to it."

"Hai, Kabuto-sensei," Hinata replied firmly, or at least trying to sound firm. The tremor in her voice was barely noticeable. She moved her hands through the practiced hand seals until her hands started to glow. It was a simple exercise, meant to better understand the relationship between the muscle structure and the nervous system, but Naruto and Kimimaro were sparring and making a lot of noise, and that was not helping her concentration one bit. But then again, if a teammate were injured on the field, she might not be able to wait for things to calm down before she did anything. If she ever made it that far.

Hinata struck the fish and pushed the green light of her medical jutsu into the dead animal.

It flopped.

Hinata and her sensei stared at the fish. _I did it,_ she thought. _I can't believe it! _She had half convinced herself that the fish was going to explode or something.

It flopped again.

"Oh," said Kabuto. "You started its heart. That was…"

"Wrong," Hinata finished.

"Overkill, ironically," he corrected. "But you know what?" he added, picking up the gasping fish. "This fish has been through a lot. Let's let it go." And with that he tossed it toward the stream.

_Klang!_

All of a sudden, a deflected kunai from Kimimaro and Naruto's sparring match flew through the air and skewered the poor fish to a tree.

"Or not," Kabuto added, getting up to retrieve the fish. "Alright, Hinata, this one is a bit harder. Let's see what you can do."

WWW

Kimimaro neatly sidestepped a crude kunai-thrust from his opponent and responded with a delicate slash at his shoulder. The shadow clone disappeared in a cloud of smoke just like the thirty others he went through. Naruto insisted on sparring every morning before their daily D-rank missions, convinced somehow that one of these days he would come out on top.

He never did.

To Naruto, this was a challenge, just one more challenge on his way to fulfilling his dream, a dream which he declared loudly to everyone nearby on a regular basis.

To Kimimaro, on a good day this was a training exercise, a warm up, or maybe a practice scenario for when he would have to capture his opponent alive, or something. On a bad day, this was an annoyance.

This wasn't a good day.

Kimimaro wished that he could go all out, without holding back. It had been a while since he had been able to let go of himself on a mission and do what he was best at, and as he sparred with Naruto, it seemed somehow _wrong_ that he was worried that he might accidently hurt someone while he was using a style developed by generations of mad killers that was specifically _designed_ to kill people.

It made things more interesting when something was at stake, when he ran the risk of _losing_ something. That certainly wasn't happening _now,_ and it hadn't happened in a long time. When he was a child, it had happened frequently. Back then, he was with his clan, as the secret weapon of the clan Kaguya, forever locked in darkness like a dangerous beast. But now and again, he would be released, and for one hour, he would have freedom.

And a purpose.

But he had a different purpose now. He had become a shinobi of the Village of the Hidden Leaf, and that was all the purpose he needed. The purpose of the Leaf was more to create than to destroy, to protect rather than to kill. Here he was free. He was safe.

Too safe, he sometimes felt. The last time he ran a risk of losing something substantial was when they had fought against a team of kiri nin. His kekkei genkai left him virtually indestructible, but he could drown as well as anyone, and the shinobi from the Hidden Mist could easily exploit that with their water jutsu. Right then, he was against three of them, with the only help of one of Kirigakure's missing nin, someone that Kimimaro had no reason to trust, but inexplicably found himself trusting entirely.

But that was past. Now he was sparring against Naruto, not in a battle of life and death. This, now, was nothing but a game. A game that was becoming frustrating.

WWW

Naruto was still grinning. He did that a lot when he was frustrated, he realized. Things weren't going too well for him in this match, but that was almost to be expected. Little by little, he was getting better, if only gradually. And more than anything else, that was what mattered. Shadow clones weren't the most effective technique against his teammate, he knew. He was hoping that Kabuto-sensei would teach him some really cool fire jutsu, or maybe a water jutsu, he'd seen some pretty nice ones, but so far he'd had no such luck, so for now, he'd just have to make do with shadow clones. All the same, if he could manage to wipe that calm, bored expression off his opponent's face, well, that would be victory enough.

"Hey, Kimimaro," he taunted. "I think it's been past three minutes now. What's taking you so long?"

Kimimaro didn't reply, but now he looked more annoyed than bored.

_Well, that's something._ "I mean, this is what you're good at, right?" he asked. "You know, cutting apart people weaker than you? You never had any difficulty before."

That was true, actually. On every mission, on every occasion that he had the chance to fight, Kimimaro would cut apart, slice, and kill every possible obstacle with all the rational ruthlessness and natural affection of a reptile. Through all this, he exhibited neither rage nor remorse, no sense of self at all. It was almost like Kimimaro didn't think of himself as human. And that frightened Naruto.

He didn't like being frightened.

"What are you?" he asked suddenly. "You've been on my team for months now, and I don't even _know_ you! All I ever see you do is fight and kill, and even then it's like it doesn't even _matter!_ Is _that_ all you _are?"_

Kimimaro hesitated long enough for a shadow clone to almost land a kick before responding.

"Yes."

WWW

Hinata was focusing mending the dying fish when she felt it, like a wave of cold, nauseating flame. She recognized it immediately. _Killer intent._ She looked up suddenly, not sure exactly where it came from. It seemed like it was coming from Naruto-kun's and Kimimaro-kun's sparring match, but that couldn't be right.

Could it?

Kabuto-sensei looked at her quizzically, as if to ask for her sudden lapse in concentration. Hinata looked back at the fish, almost apologetically. Surely if there was wrong, her sensei would have noticed it.

Right?

WWW

_What are you?_

What kind of question was that? And yet, somehow, Kimimaro couldn't discard it like the blather that usually fell out of Naruto's mouth. It…bothered him. He knew what he was. He was Kaguya Kimimaro.

No.

That was his name. Nothing more.

He was what he always was. The people involved had changed, and the place had changed, nothing more. He was who he was and who he always was. _Nothing more._

He was a fighter, a killer, and when he was not as such engaged, he strove to become a better one. He responded to Naruto's question with a "Yes," before he fully realized it was the truth.

Truth.

_All your life you live so close to truth it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it's like being ambushed by a grotesque._

He'd read that somewhere before, and had never really understood it. But now, after having the _truth_ spelled out for him in the simplest form possible, it made him want to…

Well, it made him want to justify it.

"You're right, Naruto," Kimimaro responded, his voice unrealishly calm. "I am a killer, nothing more." He slipped into the stance for the Dance of the Willows without thinking. "And tell me, _Naruto,_ why do you think that is?" His legs let go of the ground, and clones around him vanished from existence with the slightest touch. "Because it's the only think I _can_ do! _It's the only thing I'm good at!"_

One of the clones he nicked in the shoulder refused to disperse. He thrust his spear into the copy's torso and waited for it to disappear.

But it didn't disappear.

It bled.

Kimimaro froze and Naruto looked at him, as if confused why his teammate had murdered him. Kimimaro looked helplessly at Kabuto-sensei.

"It's alright, Kimimaro, just put him down gently," said Kabuto with the air of someone who saw people mortally wounded on a regular basis.

Only then did Kimimaro realized that he hadn't removed his spear. He set him down steadily, and backed away. He glanced at Hinata, and would never forget the shocked, repulsed look she gave him. When she and Kabuto-sensei had focused entirely on their wounded teammate and student, Kimimaro backed away further, headed toward the woods.

And ran.

WWW

Naruto lay sleeping, blissfully unaware of his blood spilling out of him. He had been sedated as part of the medical procedure. When he woke up, he would be mended to the best of their ability. _If_, that is...

"Uh, Kabuto-sensei?" Hinata asked cautiously, "Naruto-kun _is_ going to—"

"Of course," he said easily. "From what you've told me, his liver has seen better days, but other than that, it's just skin and muscle, basic and straightforward."

"Like the fish?" The fish had died.

"I like to think that Naruto is a bit stronger than your average trout," Kabuto laughed.

Hinata tried to laugh with him and failed horribly. "This is all my fault," she whispered sadly. "Right before it happened, I noticed that Kimimaro, he...I felt some killer intent. I should have done something, but, I..."

"Ah," he replied thoughtfully, readjusting his glasses. "And why didn't you?"

"I don't know!" she cried defensively. "I...I thought that if there were any danger, someone else would have noticed it first."

"Is that so?" He frowned slightly. "Tell me, who on this team has senses more acute than yours?" Hinata looked at him, but didn't answer. "No one, Hinata, no one. So trust yourself. Trust your instincts. Trust your eyes, and your heart. They're sharper than anyone else's on this team."

Hinata looked at her sensei, not entirely sure what he meant by that...but right now, they had more important things to worry about. She turned towards Naruto and focused on sealing his gaping wound.

WWW

Kimimaro found himself running through the woods, heading toward nowhere, but only away from what he'd done. He wasn't afraid for Naruto. Naruto wouldn't die. Kabuto-sensei was one of the best med-nins in Konoha, and besides, Naruto was…not strong, exactly, but the word _sturdy_ fit him well. And he was by far too determined and stubborn to let himself die. No, Kimimaro wasn't afraid for the state of his teammate.

But he was afraid.

He had lost control. He never lost control, but he lost control. All these years, he had thought that he had kept his fear and anger in his pocket, where he could take it out and look at it whenever he felt like it, that he had overcome the mad, blind blood lust that had dominated the clan Kaguya. And yet…

It was true, what Naruto had said. The last Kaguya was different from the rest of his clan, but he was still fundamentally the same. He had been a killer for as long as he had been able to fight, just as his clan had relished war since the beginning, and Kimimaro, the last surviving member of that clan, was good at one thing and one thing only.

And it was certainly not gardening.

And for the first time in years, that knowledge left him ashamed.

_But why should I? What reason have I to be ashamed of what I am?_

The woods ended abruptly, and Kimimaro found himself in a clearing. A black, obsidian monument stood reverently in the middle of the field, and Kimimaro knew where he was. In accordance with a long standing tradition in Konoha, the names of every shinobi who died in the service of their village were inscribed in the black stone of that memorial.

Kimimaro stood in front of the black stone for no other reason than to see if he could recognize a name. It was no use. There were far too many names for any one of them to stand out. Those names were officially recorded and chained to the remnants of human memory, but only just. If Kimimaro died honorably in battle, his name would remain on that stone, but only those who knew him personally would bother to remember him.

Kimimaro turned around and looked at the Hokage monument. The images of the four greatest leaders of Konoha's history looked aloofly down at him. The masters and servants give their lives for the Hidden Leaf, but the servants lie all but forgotten while the countenances of the great ones are immortalized in the earth.

It seemed so unfair to him. The sheer vanity alone was grotesque. _Are their lives worth so much more than the legions who died at their command?_ But then he remembered Naruto's dream, and for a moment he thought he understood the reason behind his ambition.

_The Hokage will never be forgotten._ As long as the village stood, the villagers never would, never _could_ forget the ones who led them. Kimimaro could empathize with that. To never be forgotten, to forever be part of something that would go on forever, it certainly had a dreamlike quality to it. And if he could leave some permanent mark on the world, well, the idea had some merit. But to do so, he would have to change drastically. It wouldn't be enough to just be strong, he would have to be something profoundly great, someone that could create instead of just destroy, someone that—

Kimimaro realized suddenly that he was not alone. He turned around and saw a shinobi he didn't recognize leaning casually against a tree. His hitai-ate hanging loosely over one eye and half-opened visible eye between his headband and mask made him look so unjustifiably _sloppy,_ but Kimimaro could see that he was a jounin and deserved respect.

"Carry on," the masked shinobi said easily. "Don't let me bother you."

"No, I was just leaving," Kimimaro replied. "My team is probably waiting for me."

"That wouldn't be a surprise." Kimimaro couldn't see through the mask, but he suspected that the man was smirking at him. "I expect my team's waiting for me too. I probably should get back to them sometime. Although, I have to say it's rare to see kids your age looking at graves. They're usually too absorbed with their illusion of invincibility."

"I suppose no one is invincible," Kimimaro remarked. "I wonder how old you were when you dispelled that illusion."

"Oh, I've never had such a foolish notion," he said with a wink (or did he just blink?). "How do you think I've managed to live this long?"

It was an obvious lie, but Kimimaro knew it wasn't his place to pry. He doubted that he would learn anything more here that he already had, so Kimimaro turned back toward the woods and left.

WWW

Naruto woke up with the sun in his eyes and a burning pain in his stomach.

"You're awake," remarked a familiar voice. "I probably should start using a different anesthetic. You seem to be building up a tolerance to this one."

"What...what happened?" he asked groggily. _Anesthetic._ He couldn't remember what it was, but it had something to do with making his mind feel fuzzy. Naruto noticed that he was lying on the grass and his shirt was gone. And there was blood too. He could smell blood.

"A training accident," Kabuto-sensei replied casually. "You were sparring with Kimimaro and got hurt a bit. I'd tell you not to get up and not to eat anything solid for a while, but I know you'll just ignore me."

"You got that right," Naruto remarked, getting up and reaching for his shirt. It had bloodstains on it and a hole in the front...and the back. "Wait a second!" he yelled, recalling what happened. "That maniac tried to kill me!"

"I was an accident," his sensei told him firmly. Hinata looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn't. "We've all had our share of accidents, Naruto. Even you. Sometimes the consequences are tragic and sever, other times the consequences are just a mild flesh wound."

"If this is what you call mild," he muttered, putting his shirt on, "I'd hate to see what you'd call sever."

Naruto knew what Kabuto was trying to do. He was trying to smooth out the after effects of what happened, prevent the enmity that was threatening to form so their team could act as one. But he couldn't, because he didn't really understand.

Naruto tried not to look down on people. Whether they were friends, teammates, or even kids younger than him still at the academy, Naruto would treat them with, not courtesy, but with respect. And he hated it—he _hated_ it—when people looked down on him.

And when Kimimaro stabbed him, it was a revelation that Naruto's teammate was courteously toying with him since the beginning. If they were in a real match against each other, it wouldn't be a match at all.

He couldn't deny it. The only thing he could do was to try harder, work harder, train harder. And then, one day, he'd come out on top. Because that was who he was.

That was _his_ way of the ninja.

_Never _give up!

WWW

Kimimaro and Naruto never sparred again after that. Kimimaro didn't want to bring up what was, to him, a dazzling failure of self-discipline, and Naruto...who knows? Maybe he was just tired of losing. Kimimaro didn't press the point. They just both mutually decided not to speak of what happened that day. They still went on missions together as was expected of teammates, but that was it. Whenever they trained, they did so alone, as if they were both subconsciously trying to forget the past.

But the past doesn't always allow himself to be forgotten. Sometimes when your life has leveled out to a predictable pace, the past surprisingly, unexpectedly, or even accidently comes back to remind the world that he hasn't yet disappeared.

Such a thing happened one sunny day when they saw Haku of the Hidden Mist walking down the streets of Konoha a week later.

WWW

_a/n So there it is, the first chapter of the sequel. I would like to thank my beta, Racheakt, for helping me fix some of the rougher parts and make my story, for lack of a better expression, suck less. If you don't know him, he's awesome, and if you do, you know what I'm talking about. I didn't want to get into a whole lot of plot development in this chapter, partially because I wanted to experiment to see my old readers are still interested after all this time or if they have found better things to do with their life. I haven't, but that's just me. Also, I wanted to work on the characterization a bit. I realized that Kimimaro's calm, controlled nature can get a bit redundant at times, if not boring, and one of my favorite parts in the anime was when he lost control right before he died, and I wanted to bring that out a bit. The quote he used about truth is from the play, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead." I'm not going to say that that's the greatest play ever written, because quite frankly it goes without saying. I know it's annoying to end a chapter with a cliff hanger, but I just wanted to make it clear that I'm not yet done with Haku. He's just too awesome. _


	2. Between the Woods and Frozen Lake

Konoha no Mai

Chapter Two

a/n I do not own Naruto, the manga, the anime, or the game.

My little horse must think it queer  
To stop without a farmhouse near  
Between the woods and frozen lake  
The darkest evening of the year.

-Robert Frost

_He walked down the cobblestone street, overwhelmed by the new, foreign sights, sounds, voices. And smells. The hot, dry air burned his nostrils and parched his throat. If it weren't for the green surrounding forest, he could have sworn that he was in the desert. _

_But of course, if it were in the desert, he wouldn't be there. If it were in the Hidden Sand and not the Hidden Leaf, he'd be—_sniff, sniff. "_What's that?"_

"_Why, that's dango. Would you like to buy some?"_

_Dango?_

_Hmm…_

WWW

Kimimaro walked away from the training grounds, dismissed from quite possibly the worst set of D-ranked missions that he'd ever encountered in his life. It wasn't a failure, at least, in terms of objectives. He sometimes doubted that those kinds of missions were possible to fail. They just took a while and left a lot of unpleasant memories that he was trying (unsuccessfully) to forget.

That's when he saw something impossible.

WWW

Hinata sat down under a tree and opened her book. Normally she would have been practicing medical ninjutsu with Kabuto-sensei, but he had duties at the hospital, so she settled for a large textbook of medical theory he had given her. Her large, white eyes scanned the contents, going past cancers, strokes, and finally settling on poisons.

A nagging voice in the back of her head told her that she should focus more on the Jyuuken, the family's traditional fighting style, but she knew that she would never be proficient enough in the gentle fist for her father to accept her. And besides, medical ninjutsu was something she was actually good at—_possibly the only thing I'm good at,_ she thought critically. Kabuto-sensei always seemed impressed with how fast she learned things.

Although if that was in comparison to how fast people normally learned it or how slowly she learned everything else, she couldn't tell.

Eventually, she gave in and closed her book. For nothing else, it would be good to balance her training. There was just as much a chance of her getting her team killed by not being able to fight competently as there was by not knowing the difference between neurotoxins and ___hemotoxins_.

Hinata slid into the traditional stance and, even though she wasn't facing a real opponent, activated her Byakugan.

That's when she saw something impossible.

WWW

Naruto walked down the street, determined to make the absolute most of the limited free time he now had. There would be an unprecedented amount of training. First he would practice dodging as his shadow clones threw kunai at him (or maybe he should use rocks this time. Kunai were kind of _sharp_), and then he would take out every individual kage bunshin until he was bruised, bloodied, and on the point of collapse, and _then_ he would do it again!

_But_ at the start of every great day, there was an even greater meal.

"Ichiraku, here I come!"

But he hesitated. Ramen was important, but getting stronger was even more important still, and Kabuto-sensei had always stressed the importance of a balanced, nutritional diet. And yet…

"Ramen is full of wonderful and awesome," he decided firmly. "And that's all the nutrition I need."

That's when he saw something impossible.

"Hey, Kimimaro," he said, passing by. "Hey Haku."

WWW

Kimimaro knew it was impossible, but possibility seldom had a great effect on reality. In the middle of the street, not five meters in front of him, in broad daylight, was Haku, a missing nin from Kirigakure that his team had encountered not two months past.

Haku's dark brown eyes looked startled when he saw him, but only for an instant. "Hello, Kimimaro-kun."

Kimimaro hesitated to reply when he noticed Haku's unblemished hitai-ate. When they had last met, Haku's forehead protector bore the emblem of the Hidden Mist, but it had a slash through it to show his disaffiliation with the village. Haku's hitai-ate still wore the mark of the kiri, but…

"You are no longer a missing nin," he noted.

Haku ran a finger down the smooth surface of the metal plate. "No," he said, with a hint of…what? Sadness, perhaps? "I used to think that I could live apart from the war and despair of this world, but things are changing, Kimimaro-kun. Things that I cannot let happen are happening, and I cannot stand aside and let the people around me fall."

Kimimaro nodded, not specifically understanding what was said, but understanding Haku. The mist shinobi had a talent of inspiring trust, and it was much too sublime to be feigned. "But if you are an official shinobi of the Hidden Mist," Kimimaro asked, "then what are you doing here?"

"It's complicated," he started before a voice interrupted him.

"There you are, Haku!" called a kunochi with a mist headband, followed by another shinobi of the same village. "I found Hano. Who's your frie—" Her eyes widened when she noticed Kimimaro's red facial markings, which marked him as a member of the Kaguya clan, a clan which was, with one exception, extinct.

Kimimaro looked carefully at the two strangers. "And these are…" he asked Haku.

"Hey, Kimimaro," Naruto said, walking amiably down the street. "Hey Haku." He stopped and did a double take. "You!" he started, straining to make sense of the situation. "…you!"

"Wow," said the other mist shinobi, Hano, apparently, seemingly impressed. "It can point _and_ talk. Most of the monkeys I've met on the way here can only do the first."

Naruto turned from Haku and glared at the other one. "Who are you?"

"He's my teammate," Haku supplied. "They both are."

"_What?"_ Naruto asked incredulously. "He's your…what?"

"It must be part parrot," Hano observed. "It does seem to repeat itself a lot."

"Call me that again and I'll punch you in the face!" Naruto growled.

"Touchy little parrot-monkey, aren't you?"

_WHAM!_

Haku didn't move and the kunochi on his team jumped back and reached for a knife, but Hano just laughed as a drop of blood trickled from his lip. "You have no idea how often that happens to me."

Naruto looked surprised. He apparently expected the other shinobi to block or dodge or do at least _something_. "Sorry, I didn't mean to, well, I did, but…right."

An awkward silence filled the air before Haku broke it. "Hello, Hinata-chan. It's good to see you again." He had the air of a man forcibly ignoring reality, and inviting everyone else to do the same.

"Good afternoon, Haku-kun," she replied politely, if a little nervous. "Um, may I ask what exactly are you doing in Konoha?"

"It's complicated," he began.

"We're here to burn the village to the ground!" Hano proclaimed cheerfully.

"No we're not," said the mist kunochi, glaring at Hano. "We're just here to participate in the chunin exams."

WWW

"Kabuto-sensei!" shouted Naruto, bursting into the room. "It's here!"

It was only due to years of honing his temperament that Kabuto resisted the impulse to jump at the unexpected noise. "You know," he said calmly as he slipped a needle into an unconscious patient's shoulder. "I may have told you this before, but you shouldn't try to surprise me when I'm in the middle of surgery. If you distract me at the wrong moment, someone may die."

"But—but _sensei!_ This isn't like a matter of life and death! This is about the _chunin exams!_ They're _here!_ Right here in Konoha!"

Kabuto carefully removed the blood sample he had just taken. The patient wasn't responding optimally to the medication, but not so much as to be attributed to allergy. Kabuto hoped that he didn't have a resistant strain, but it seemed probable.

He glanced at Naruto. He didn't bother asking how the boy had gotten here. Naruto could break into the Hokage's office if he really wanted to, and hospital security wasn't what it used to be. Hinata had probably located him with her Byakugan and had told Naruto where he was.

"And I imagine you want to join," he said, just slowly enough to irritate his student.

"_Yes!_"

"Are you sure you're ready?" Kabuto asked, knowing in full the answer. "You could just wait till next time."

"_Next time?_" he shrieked. "I can't wait till _next time!_ That could take forever!"

"Six months?"

"_Yes!_"

Kabuto tried very hard not to smile as he adjusted his glasses. The first time he had taken the chunin exam, it had been a calculated risk, to gauge the expectations of the rank and measure the skill of the competition. Naruto, on the other hand, expected to plow through every segment of the test with flying colors, completely oblivious to the difficulties—and dangers—involved.

"Do Kimimaro and Hinata know about the exam too?"

"Of course they do. They want to enter just as much as I do."

_Somehow I doubt that's possible._ "Where are they?"

"They're downstairs in the waiting room. I guess they didn't think that breaking in the emergency room would be that much fun."

"Well, I'll tell you what," he replied. "I still have to make a few rounds, so tell everyone to meet me at training ground twelve at around five o'clock."

Naruto agreed with his typical enthusiasm and left.

_The chunin exams?_ Kabuto mused, alone with his thoughts. _I wasn't planning on entering them so quickly. And yet…_they had progressed a great deal in the last few months. Not necessarily enough to make chunin, but still…

_This could be interesting._

WWW

Haku glanced at the rooftops nervously, as if expecting to be shadowed by a team of Konoha ANBU. This place was new, foreign to him, and he didn't trust this village any more than he expected the village to trust him, but he did his best to keep his emotions from showing on his face.

"Relax, Haku. You don't have anything to worry about," Kaya said. Keeping his feelings hidden was never a strength of his. In fact, that was one of the reasons why he preferred to hide behind a mask, and his teammate had a gift for reading people. "After all your years as a missing nin," she continued, "something as simple as the chunin exams should be a walk in the park."

"All my years as a missing nin," Haku said softly, "taught me that simple missions aren't. Not too long ago, we were hired to assassinate a defenseless, old man. It was supposed to be simple. It wasn't."

Kaya nodded. "And that team of shinobi we just met, were they the ones who stopped you?"

Haku shook his head. "No. We were stopped by a team lead by the Copy nin, Kakashi. I didn't run into _them_ until a few weeks afterwards."

"There was that tall guy," mused Hano. "He was from the Kaguya clan, wasn't he?" He laughed. "And all this time I thought they were extinct. More the pity, I guess."

Haku looked at his teammate. Hano could prove erratic, and often careless with his own life. He had gotten lost and separated from the team within five minutes of entering Konoha, and more than once he had gotten in a fight with a more powerful shinobi by innocently insulting the man's mother, dog, country, honor, and all his ancestors. But every time he got into a near-death situation, he would always laugh afterwards, and say "I can't die! I'm invincible!"

"By the way, where were you?" Haku asked. "We were looking for you for nearly half an hour after you got lost."

"I was looking at stuff," he said defensively. "There's all sorts of stuff that no one would ever _think_ of putting in the Hidden Mist. I saw these hot springs, where you can boil yourself alive with a bunch of naked people, and then I saw this stand that sells rice dumplings on a stick! They were really cheap, too."

WWW

Naruto paced the training grounds impatiently. He was fidgeting, pacing, tapping his foot, glancing at his watch as he had been for the past half hour. Kimimaro sat motionless with his back to a tree. Both of them seemed confident, sure, even excited about the prospect of entering the exam.

Hinata wanted to throw up.

Kimimaro was ready. He was skilled and a genius at taijutsu. Naruto didn't have the same natural talent, but he had the sort of will and determination that could carve through a stone wall. But Hinata…she had neither. She had a faint hope that Kabuto-sensei would come and tell them that there was a complication and they couldn't enter the exam, but she doubted it.

_But what if…what if _they_ pass the exam and become chunin…and I don't? _She glanced at Naruto, at his vibrant blue eyes and bright sunny hair, and had a wrenching feeling in her gut.

_What if I get left behind?_

WWW

Kimimaro looked up when he saw his sensei arrive. Naruto, who had been bursting with excitement for nearly half the afternoon, exploded in enthusiasm. Hinata looked up, gulped, and looked back at her feet.

"Kabuto-sensei! You made it!" Naruto shouted exuberantly. "We've been waiting forever for you!"

Oddly enough, less than two hours ago forever was a period of six months. Now, it was less than a day. The difference was due to either a concentrated time dilation or hyperbole. Kabuto suspected the latter.

"Sorry I took so long," he replied. "I had a patient who came down with the H-12-7 virus, someone got palsy and can't feel the left side of his body, and in another twenty minutes I have to do an autopsy, but in the mean time, I did manage to get the forms you need for the chunin exam."

"Excellent!" said Naruto. Kimimaro nodded respectfully. Hinata looked grim.

"However," Kabuto continued, "there are some things that you have to understand about the exam. Do you remember the genin exam?" They nodded. "Good, because the chunin exam will be nothing like it. First of all, this exam will be a lot more difficult. Usually, less than ten percent of the participating genin pass each time. Secondly, this exam is much more dangerous."

Kabuto adjusted his glasses and continued. "The exam is composed of three parts: the written test, the survival test, and the tournament. The first one is relatively safe—no one has died during the written segment in a long time. The tournament can be tougher. Despite it's safe guards, people can get seriously injured during the fight. The survival segment, however, is completely unsupervised, and if you run into someone who wants to kill you and is stronger than you and you can't get away, you will die."

Hinata looked pale and was trembling visibly, and even Naruto looked sober. Kabuto didn't like slamming the unpleasant truth in their faces, but there were things they had to know. "And when you die, that's it. No more second chances. If you get yourself killed in this exam, you lose everything, including your dream. So don't try to take the exam this year. Not unless you're willing to risk it."

"Although," he added, taking the forms out of his vest pocket, "if you are willing to take the exam, sign these applications and take them to room 301 of the registration office tomorrow at four. That is all."

WWW

Kimimaro looked down at the application after Kabuto left. He didn't express his enthusiasm as much as Naruto did, but he did want to join. He felt he stood a chance of becoming chunin, and even though he had absolutely _nothing_ against babysitting and shoveling manure (cough, cough), he felt that he could be more useful to his village by accomplishing more dangerous missions, which missions he could not participate in as a genin.

Naruto would enter, too. Of that, Kimimaro had no doubt. Naruto would boldly go where angels feared to tread, and often did. Kabuto's speech had quieted him to some degree, but the effect was wearing off.

Hinata was another story entirely.

"I…I'm sorry," she whispered, dropping the form on the ground. "I just…I can't do this." She left without another word.

"Huh?" asked Naruto. "Hey, Hinata! Where are you going?" He looked down at her unsigned examination form and then at Kimimaro. "What just happened?"

"Besides the obvious, I can't say," Kimimaro replied. "Are you going to go talk to her?"

Naruto glanced over his shoulder and looked at the ground nervously. "I'm not really good at talking to people," he muttered. He could talk about any subject indefinitely, but any job that required subtlety was a job that required someone else. "Why don't _you_ talk to her?"

"What could I say? I do not understand her problem."

That wasn't exactly true. Kimimaro did understand that Hinata was scared and self conscious about her weaknesses, but he understood that on a purely intellectual level. He could not, however, _relate_ to her very well. Relating to people in general was something that he was not adept at.

"But what does it matter?" Kimimaro asked rhetorically. "If she doesn't want to join, then she doesn't want to join. And even if she did, she'd probably just get in the way. We'd be better off without her."

"_Better off without her?_" Naruto repeated incredulously. "What do you mean, we'd be better off without her? Hinata's one of _us,_ she's part of the _team!_ _We need her!_ And even if _you're_ too much of an arrogant prick to realize that, I do!" He paused and looked in the direction that Hinata had left. "And I'm going to make sure she realizes that too!"

Kimimaro tried not to smile after Naruto left. He couldn't manipulate people like Kabuto-sensei could, but he had been observing his sensei a great deal over the past few months, and Kimimaro hopefully learned a thing or two.

More importantly, Naruto was _painfully _easy to manipulate.

WWW

She didn't want to die. She wasn't ready, and death terrified her. Fear ruled her life, not just of death, but of _everything._ Fear of dying, fear of being hurt, of letting her team down, of what her friends thought of her, of her father's disapproval, and she hated herself for it.

Hinata knew that she wasn't chunin material, but until Kabuto-sensei mentioned it, she hadn't suspected that she could come home from the exam dead. She thought about what would happen if she did come home dead, what people would say if they saw her bloody, torn up carcass brought back. Kabuto-sensei would be disappointed—_All that time I spent training her. What a waste—_and Naruto-kun and Kimimaro-kun would be sad. Kimimaro would remain solemn and aloof, and Naruto would never know how she felt about him. And her father—_Pity. It seems she really did turn out to be a failure her whole life. How…unfortunate—_well, she didn't want to think about that.

"Hinata! There you are. I've been looking for you."

Hinata looked up and saw a blurry orange form coming towards her. _Blurry…_she didn't even notice she was crying. Hinata wiped her eyes quickly so no one would see. _As if I weren't pathetic enough already._

"Hey, Hinata, I need to talk to you," Naruto said as he sat down next to her. "Uh, are you alright?"

"Yes, Naruto-kun, I'm fine," she lied. "I…I'm sorry, but, but I"—_stuttering tongue, clumsy mouth, fleeing words_—"I can't do it. I can't enter the exam. You and Kimimaro-kun can, but…I'm sorry. I can't."

"What do you mean you can't? Why can't you?"

"Because I…I'm not strong enough." She hated to admit it, but it was true. "I'm not strong enough to compete. I can't be strong like you." Naruto was one of the strongest people she knew. He was confident, brave, determined; he was everything she wasn't. It was a cosmic joke when they had been put on the same team, as though fate was taunting her with a dream that could never happen.

"Bull crap!" he retorted. "You're plenty strong. You're almost as smart as Kabuto-sensei, you can do that weird, green-chakra ninjutsu he does, you can see through walls, you can do that weird, magic touch taijutsu thing. How can you even say you're not strong?"

Hinata wished with all her heart that she could believe what Naruto was telling her, but she had a lifetime of cold, hideous truths to disagree. "I've always been the weakest on the team, Naruto-kun," she said sadly. "You know that. I'm always the one getting in the way of the mission. Do you remember our first C-ranked mission? The very first fight, I got captured. If I wasn't rescued, I could have…I would have been killed. And later, at the bridge, I didn't help anyone, I only got in the way. I nearly drowned at the waterfall, and the whole team could have died trying to save me. If that happens again in the exam…I don't think I could handle it."

Naruto let the silence fall for a moment. Hinata expected him to deny the plain, obvious facts that she was a weakling with no talent.

"Uh, Hinata," Naruto replied. "Are you _blind?_" Hinata flinched visibly. "Or were you just too busy looking at your own mistakes that you didn't notice the rest of us? Two weeks ago, we had a D-ranked mission where we had to walk dogs. _My_ dog nearly made off with my right leg and almost dragged me through a minefield before Kabuto-sensei stepped in. Last week, when we had to clean up trash from the river, I got stuck in the current and would have drowned if Kimimaro hadn't helped me. And then just today, when we were looking for the fire Daimyo's wife's cat, that _thing_ nearly took out my jugular! If it weren't for _your_ medical ninjutsu, I'd either be dead or passed out from lack of blood."

"We're all going to make mistakes, Hinata," he continued. "I've screwed up more times than I can count, but you've always been there for me. That's why we're on a team, so we can look out for each other. _That's_ why we need you. So just forget about what Kabuto said about this 'mortal peril' thing. I won't let anything happen to you. I promise."

Hinata looked at him, and saw him smiling back at her. It was that smile that she had first fallen in love with. He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that someone might come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on her with an irresistible prejudice in her favor. It understood her just as far as she wanted to be understood, believed in her as she would like to believe in herself.

When she looked at that smile, his smile, she felt as though she could do anything.

Well, almost anything.

She couldn't say no, and she couldn't help but smile back.

WWW

a/n So here's chapter two. First and foremost, I would like to thank my beta for beta-ing this. I really ought to pay him more. And I would also like to congratulate ArmorOfGeddon for being the first reader to leave a review. ArmorOfGeddon, you deserve a cookie. If I had one, and you lived nearby, and I for some reason didn't want to eat said cookie, I would give it to you. And for the rest of my readers who would like to deserve a cookie that I won't give, who noticed the Great Gatsby reference? It was pretty obvious, so if you read it in the last half decade, you should have spotted it. The frozen lake in the beginning poem is Haku, and the woods are the leaf nin.


	3. Marks of Woe

Konoha no Mai

Chapter Three

a/n I do not own Naruto, nor any of the characters thereof.

I wandered through each chartered street,  
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,  
A mark in every face I meet,  
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,  
In every infant's cry of fear,  
In every voice, in every ban,  
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry  
Every blackening church appalls,  
And the hapless soldier's sigh  
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

-William Blake, London

The sun burnt through a cloudless sky scorching the brown earth except where green leaves cast swaying shadows. The still day left the streets stinking of human sweat and too much talk, in Kimimaro's opinion.

He never arrived late to a mission, and this might be the most important mission that he'd received in years. All the same, he was not surprised when Naruto was already waiting for him. His teammate merely looked up and grunted when he saw him before staring off impatiently into the distance.

"You're not nervous, are you?" Kimimaro probed, having expected Naruto to be vibrating with the ecstatic thrill he usually reserved for near death experiences.

"Hm? Oh, yeah sure," Naruto replied absently. "What time is it?"

"It's about three thirty."

"Ah." He considered that for a moment. "What time does the exam start?"

"At four."

"Hm." Naruto did some calculations in his head. "_What?_ _Four?_ That's in, like, half an hour, and we still need to do the registration thingy!"

"I thought there was something odd about the way you were acting," Kimimaro noted. "How long have you been waiting here?"

"Since lunch, but that doesn't matter! We have to get going!"

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

Naruto checked his pockets, but didn't find anything. "Oh crap! Where's Hinata! She's not here yet!"

"No, she isn't," Kimimaro observed.

"We have to find her! She can't be far. You check her house, the hospital, and training grounds one through fifteen. I'll take Ichiraku and training grounds sixteen through forty."

"You really don't see the flaw in your idea, do you?"

"What?"

"First of all, she could arrive here when we're out looking for her, second of all, if one of us finds her, there would be no way to contact the other, and third of all, turn around."

Naruto turned and saw Hinata walking slowly towards them. "Hinata! You're here! What happened?"

She forced a weak smile. "Sorry I'm late," she apologized. "I—"

"Never mind that. Are you ready to go? Let's go!" Not waiting for a response, he grabbed her by the wrist and ran into the examination building and up the stairs.

There was a fight going on. The room Naruto wanted to get into was blocked by two older shinobi who were telling everyone how the chunin exam was going to get all of them killed and how they should all run home to their mothers and hide under their beds. "We've failed the chunin exams three times already, and if people as awesome as us can't pass, you little wimps have no chance."

That wasn't exactly what they said, but that was the gist of it.

Most of the shinobi in the room were, sickeningly, taking it. In fact, only one team was fighting against them, and were doing it very poorly. Hinata stifled a gasp in surprise. Naruto moved to help them, but Hinata grabbed his arm.

"Something's not right," she whispered. "I know that team who's fighting them. They're…pretending."

"What do you mean?"

One of the shinobi got knocked down by the two bullies. He had long, dark hair and pale eyes. He glanced at Hinata, only for a moment, and she stepped back as though struck.

"I—I know that person," Hinata whispered, holding a trembling hand to her mouth.

"The one with hair so long he looks like a girl?"

"His name is Neji. With half his strength, he could put the two shinobi blocking the doorway in the hospital. And his two teammates…the way they're stepping, fighting, just with their body language they're lying."

_Lying?_ Once on a mission, after conversing with an informant, Kabuto turned to Hinata and asked, "So, when was he lying?" At the time, Naruto didn't understand how an experienced jounin could miss something and expect one of them to catch it, but Kabuto laughed and said, "Catching a lie isn't so much about what you hear as what you see. No one can lie to a Hyuuga."

"Oh, I get it," Naruto said. "They're just _pretending_ to fight like Konohamaru's classmates so they can…do what now?"

"You know, Naruto," Kimimaro said, catching up. "Considering how this exam is the most important and dangerous mission we've ever been on, perhaps you might listen to the caution you so frequently throw to the winds."

"Huh? Why is that?"

"I can't say, but something doesn't _look_ right. What do you think, Hinata?

Hinata activated her Byakugan and her eyes widened. "How did you…"

"Not enough stairs."

"What? What's going on?"

Kimimaro gave a long-suffering sigh.

"I'll explain later," Kimimaro told Naruto. "But we'd best hurry. We have less than half an hour before the first exam, and I can't say how many extra tests we'll come across."

After another flight of stairs, Naruto found out that the screwy building had two third stories, but no second one. Sure, even builders made mistakes, and sometimes it paid to have more than one of a certain floor if there was enough cool stuff in it, but it seemed rather sloppy of Kabuto to neglect to mention that they were supposed to report to the _second_ room 301, and not the first.

_I guess that's why we had to get here early._

"Excuse me," called a voice from behind. "You are Kaguya Kimimaro, are you not?"

"Heck no," Naruto replied. "My name's Uzumaki Naruto. Kimimaro's my teammate."

"I think he was talking to me," Kimimaro said.

"Oh. I knew that."

"That is correct," the shinobi replied. He was wearing an unnecessary amount of green and had the hugest eyebrows Naruto had ever seen. "My name is Lee. Rock Lee. I have an interest in you, Kimimaro."

"Eh, strange men are interested in you," Naruto interpreted. "You 'd better be careful."

"How so?" Kimimaro asked Lee, ignoring him.

"You are a taijutsu specialist," Lee explained. "I am too. Among your peers, your taijutsu skills are unsurpassed, but last year I graduated from the academy as dead last. I wish to see how my dedicated training fairs against natural genius."

"Is that a challenge?"

"Do you accept?"

"Right now?"

"Yes."

"I accept."

WWW

Kimimaro fell into stance, and his opponent did the same. _Lee._ A straightforward, simple name. He probably lent himself to a simple, straightforward fighting style, focusing on the basics to an extreme level. He graduated from the academy a year before, but time didn't tell Kimimaro much if he didn't know what the shinobi did with it. _A desire to prove himself…_

"Hold on a second," Naruto interrupted. "Kimimaro, what are you doing? Didn't you just say twenty seconds ago that we were in a hurry?"

"I said we had to be prepared for unexpected tests. This is one of them. Come at me whenever you're ready, Lee."

"Bullcrap, Kimimaro. You want to know the fast way of getting out of this? Tell the guy in the super hero suit where to go and leave."

_Super hero suit?_ "I'll have to face him eventually in the exam. It might as well be now. Lee? Now means now."

"You are always like this!" Naruto shouted. "On every mission, you always hog all the—"

"Dynamic Entry!"

In a green blur, Lee was right in front of him, planting his heel into Kimimaro's chest, sending him flying through the air. The wall behind him crumbled like styrofoam, and Kimimaro paused for a moment to gather his wits before pulling himself to his feet.

"What was that about, you jerk?" Kimimaro heard Naruto yell. "He wasn't ready!"

"Yes he was," Lee said stiffly. "He said so."

"He's right, Naruto," Kimimaro said, stepping out of the hole in the wall and shaking off some rubble. "If he caught me by surprise, that was my fault, not his. And, Naruto? Either pick a side or stay out of the way."

"What?"

Kimimaro turned to Lee. "You're fast," he said. "Fast enough to hit me. But you'll need much more than that to hurt me."

Lee nodded. "Then I'll just have to go all out." He untied the bandages on his arms until they hung from his wrists like long tentacles.

"Wait!" Hinata said.

_Not you, too._ "What?"

"If we—this is against the rules," she said. "If someone sees us fighting outside of the exam, we could get disqualified."

"What?" asked Naruto. "That's lame!"

Lee stared at Hinata a long moment before he nodded and reset his bandages. "You look familiar," he said. "Have I…"

Hinata shook her head. "I'm his cousin."

"Ah. Yes, I can see the resemblance."

Hinata looked at the floor and didn't respond.

"Well, Kimimaro, it's been a pleasure meeting you, and I apologize for the inconvenience. Hopefully we'll run into each other again in the exam."

"Wow," Naruto said after Lee left. "We are so majorly out of our league. This is going to be great."

"I could have defeated him," Kimimaro said.

"That's not what I meant," Naruto replied. "What, you didn't see it? No? What about you, Hinata? You saw it, didn't you?"

Hinata frowned and shook her head uncomfortably.

"Wow, this has never happened to me before. Usually it's just the opposite where everyone else sees something and I have no idea." He turned to Kimimaro. "So are you going to ask me what I saw or not?"

He rolled his eyes. "What was it?"

"When he took off his bandages, did you see how bruised up his hands were?"

"So he got back from a rough mission, so what?"

"And still sore from his mission, the first thing he does is pick fights with random people, right? No, he wouldn't have challenged you unless that was something he was used to, that was from training. Have you ever punch something so much that you have marks for it the day after? I've tried, but no matter how much I hit it, the next day my hands are back to normal."

"So you're saying he's dedicated?"

Naruto grinned. "Like I said, this is going to be great."

WWW

Kabuto glanced at his watch and leaned back against the wall. It all depended on Hinata, really, whether or not his team would participate. Naruto and Kimimaro would come, but Hinata was less transparent. She weighed the consequences more than Naruto and was weaker than Kimimaro. Left to herself, Kabuto knew she wouldn't join the chunin exams for maybe another year, but people seldom made decisions alone, that was what made social interactions so fascinating.

"Kabuto-sensei!" Naruto yelled on sight. His team made it with its usual subtle grace. Even Hinata was there.

_Well,_ Kabuto thought. _I guess I won a bet with myself._ "You made it. I was getting worried that you wouldn't show."

"Are you kidding me?" Naruto asked incredulously. "I wouldn't miss the chunin exams for anything. I've never let something like mortal peril get in my way before, and I'm not going to start now."

"Oh, I knew you wouldn't be afraid," Kabuto said with a laugh. Hinata bowed her head in shame, but he pretended not to notice. "I was just worried that you'd end up lost in the wrong side of the building, or delayed by some overly competitive showoff."

Naruto gave an embarrassed laugh. "You know, there's a funny story about that."

Just then Kabuto saw something that he never wanted to see unexpectedly. It was a single eighth note imprinted in a metal plate, tied around a boy's head. Kabuto's expression flickered for a second—a fraction of a second—no more. Kimimaro and Naruto, he knew, wouldn't even have noticed.

"Well, what have we here?" one asked. "Looks like greenies."

"Hey, don't diss green people," Naruto said immediately. "I saw a green person just now, he moved so fast you couldn't even see him. Which was good, because his speed wasn't the only reason he was hard to look at, if you know what I mean."

Every now and then, Naruto would say something that would put everyone around him off balance, and Kabuto suspected that it was intentional.

"Dude," Naruto continued, facing the hunched over sound nin with bandages all over his face. "That is the most back hair that I've ever seen on anyone. You'll have to tell me how you do it some time. But more importantly, who the heck are you people supposed to be?"

Some of the sound nin restrained grins and smothered laughter, but most just rolled their eyes and glared, convinced that they were talking to an idiot. There wasn't just one team here, but nine genin, three teams total. If Naruto even noticed that he was out numbered, he didn't show it, but Kimimaro was ready to start slicing people if things got dicey.

"Are you blind as well as stupid?" the hunched, bandaged shinobi sneered as he pointed to his headband. "See this? This is the emblem of Otogakure. Or haven't you heard of the Hidden Sound?"

"Otogakure?" Naruto gasped theatrically, thoroughly enjoying himself. "_You're_ from Otogakure? Yeah, you're right, I've never heard you. Though how do you hide a sound? You'd think you'd be able to find it as long as you were within hearing distance."

One of the sound nin, one with spiky brown hair, pulled out a kunai. "That's it. I'm going to kill this guy."

"Clever, Zaku," came a voice from around the corner. "Attack another participant of the chunin exam in the presence of his jounin sensei. May your bravery bring honor to your village and rid us of your incompetence." The speaker stepped around the corner, fixing Zaku with a dead-eyed stare.

"Hoshui-sensei!" the sound nin, Zaku, gasped.

"And in the future," he continued, "I hope you have the decency to cover up your inferiority complex during the exam. I don't want any naked mentalities running around when I'm not here to supervise."

Zaku bowed his head and nodded meekly.

Kabuto looked at the sound nin's jounin sensei—pale skin, straight black hair in a topknot, tight smile—and smiled politely. "Hoshui?" he said. "I wasn't expecting the Otokage to send _you_ here with the genin. This exam just keeps on getting better."

"I hope my genin didn't bother you, Yakushi-san," Hoshui said with the courtesy of a frozen statue.

"Hold on," Naruto interrupted. "How do you know our sensei?"

Hoshui gave Naruto an appraising look before he looked back at Kabuto. "Your sensei is famous. Called 'Bloodless,' for the immaculate, unmarked corpses he makes of his enemies. Or didn't you know that, child?"

"Child? My name is Uzumaki Naruto, and I'm going to ace this exam and someday I'll be Hokage!"

Some of the sound nin smirked, but Hoshui didn't miss a beat. "Training the future Hokage, are you? I'm sure Konoha will be grateful for the _loyal_ service you have rendered her." He granted Kabuto's students a wintery smile. "It's been a pleasure meeting you in person, Yakushi Kabuto, but I don't want to keep you." Hoshui led the nine sound genin past Kabuto and his team. Kabuto gauged the distance between them, but nothing in his manner showed anything that wasn't absolutely polite.

"Well," Kabuto said afterwards. "That was interesting."

"I know," Naruto said. "That jounin was kind of creepy, and he seemed like a jerk too. Like some creepy jerk guy."

"Yes, there's that," Kabuto replied. "What else?"

"There were three three-man teams, but only one jounin sensei," Kimimaro noted. "Is that normal?"

"Actually, it is. I'm here to oversee your progress during the exam, but I can still perform my other duties if necessary. If the exam were in another village, it's more complicated. You would still have an escort, but often one jounin takes three or four teams instead of just his own. But let me put it this way. The genin exam took place only within your village, but the chunin exam is international. Why do you think that is?"

"Because it's so much more awesome that way!" Naruto exclaimed.

"Thank you, Naruto, that was very profound. Hinata, can you add to that?"

"Uh, because this way, we can display the strength of our village, so prospective customers can decide whether to employ shinobi from our village or another," Hinata said uncomfortably. "Oh, and it also maintains a standard, so a chunin from another village will be more or less the same strength as a chunin from this one."

"Precisely," Kabuto said. "Now, suppose you're from a minor village, and you think you can make more money from your genin you just say they're chunin, or that you're jounin will stand a better chance of success if everyone thinks they're genin. That's mostly what Otogakure is like."

"So there a shinobi can change his rank based only on the Otokage's discretion?" Kimimaro asked. "Then why are those sound nin participating in the exams?"

"That is a very good question," Kabuto said. "And I don't know. There's a good chance it's nothing—a change of policy, maybe—but all the same, I want you to avoid the sound nin whenever possible, and if you have to face them, proceed with caution. I don't know what they're capable of, but I can guarantee a surprise."

"Um, Kabuto-sensei?" Hinata asked. "What did Hoshui-san mean about your 'loyal service?'"

Kabuto laughed lightly. "Let's just say the in the sound, they have a very Machiavellian view of loyalty and honor."

"Machia-what now?" Naruto asked.

"That means anyone willing to sacrifice his life for his village is a royal fool, and the ideal leader is someone willing to murder his own mother in cold blood."

"That sounds pretty stupid," Naruto remarked.

"Yeah, they're not exactly Konoha's closest diplomatic friends."

Kabuto felt himself relax as his three students filed into the next room. It took a subtle control to lie to a Hyuuga of any capacity, but Kabuto lived enough lies to make it work. What bothered him most, though, was that Orochimaru was making his move. He just put ten shinobi in Konoha, at _least_ ten. He was planning something.

How come he didn't know?

WWW

Names identified people, created them. All his life, Kimimaro had been Kimimaro. People called him that, but beyond that, Kimimaro called _himself_ that. That was the power of a name. If followed you, accompanied you your whole life. If you're not careful, you _become_ your name.

Nicknames were different. They were no less powerful, but they were sewn of actions and reaped of perceptions. That led Kimimaro to ask something.

How did Kabuto-sensei gain a nickname like Bloodless?

Kimimaro knew better than anyone how Kabuto-sensei could kill a man without shedding blood, but the idea that he _never_ shed blood was an exaggeration. But more than that, the connotation of the word "Bloodless" was disconcerting. It felt…dispassionate? Well, that fit his sensei like glove when it suited him. Unnatural? Made sense. No other word better described what the med-nin could do with corpses. But more precisely, the word _felt_ wrong, like Kabuto-sensei left his _enemies_ bloodless, devoid of blood, life…purpose.

Kimimaro shook his head and steeled his mind in a different direction. He looked around the room. There were more shinobi waiting for the exam than Kimimaro could count. More than a hundred, and most of them would fail. _No, almost all will fail._ He looked around and saw shinobi from the sand, the grass, the—_Haku!_

On the far side of the room, he spied Haku and the two mist nin on his team. Kimimaro nodded at him, but Haku's expression remained unreadable. Was he glad that they'd be taking the exam together? Was he nervous about the chance of facing each other? Not too long ago, they fought each other, and if necessary, Kimimaro knew he could win. That seemed plausible, but—

"So you guys got suckered into taking this stupid test too, huh?" Shikamaru said.

"Heck no," Naruto said. "We suckered ourselves into taking this stupid test, thank you very much."

Kimimaro heard Sasuke give a derisive snort. "Yeah, you—gah!"

"Sasuke-kun!" Ino squealed, jumping up and hugging him from behind. "I haven't seen you in ages!"

It took every ounce of self discipline for Sasuke not to tear her from his shoulders and throw her through a wall. Kimimaro did that once at the academy. He was very sincere and apologetic afterwards, a reflex, he called it, but if it works it works. He never had to deal with that problem again, and Sasuke had always secretly admired him for that.

"Get off of Sasuke-kun, you pig!" Sakura growled. Sasuke winced inwardly. It was bad enough to be tackled and nearly strangled by one annoying little girl without another annoying little girl jumping to his rescue.

"Wow," said Ino's teammate, Idate. "I guess it turns out we _aren't_ the only rookies here foolish enough to take the exams."

Kimimaro knew Idate from the academy. He cheated when it suited him, and flirted when it suited no one else, but was overall unremarkable in any way.

"Yeah, I haven't seen you people since graduation," the third member of their team, Yakumo, said. Pale and sickly, she failed at the most basic physical activities—like running—and couldn't even attempt taijutsu. Kimimaro suspected that she passed the taijutsu portion of the genin exam by casting a genjutsu on the chunin instructor.

"I know what you mean," Idate drawled. "I thought I was done for good with these ugly mugs. Except for you, Hinata. How're you doing?"

Hinata backed up a step, ducking her chin under her hitate-ate around her neck.

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Naruto growled.

"Work it out, idiot," came a voice from behind. "It seems pretty obvious to me."

Naruto turned around and saw a small white dog sitting on a shinobi's head. "Hey, Akamaru. Kiba, what an unpleasant surprise."

"You can say that again," Kiba replied. "I thought that you'd _stop_ eating ramen for breakfast once you became a genin."

"Wait, how'd you know what I had for breakfast?"

"That's for me to know and for you to find out," Kiba replied. "But I'll give you a hint. If you didn't talk, _I'd have no idea."_

Akamaru barked in agreement.

Naruto swatted absently at a fly by his face. "You know what? I think you're just trying to get me to shut—dah!"

Shino appeared from nowhere and grabbed him by the wrist. "Careful, Naruto. You might hit something. You _don't_ want to hit something."

"Well, I didn't before," Naruto said irritably, yanking his arm from Shino's grasp.

"Easy there, Shino," Chouji said, holding a bag of chips. "He didn't mean anything."

"Yeah, thanks Chouji," Naruto said. "By the way, you look different. Have you gained weight or something?"

Chouji's eyes narrowed into thin, dangerous slits.

"…or maybe it's…that scarf! Right. That's a new scarf, isn't it? It looks good on you."

And awkward silence filled their circle, until Haku's teammate, Hano, standing upside-down from the ceiling on the other side of the room, broke it.

"Hey, excuse me, everyone! Could I say something? I'd like to say something real quick."

WWW

There was something horribly psychological about the wait before the first exam. They couldn't just let them go in and take the stupid test, they had to make them wait with nothing to do but dread it.

"It's more than that, Kaya," Haku said. "The examiners are giving us a chance to observe the other contestants. Everyone here is trying to hide or feign weakness and gauge the strengths of their opponents."

Kaya looked around. Not a whole lot of people seemed to be paying attention to them, but… "Your leaf friends are getting a lot of dirty looks."

"They're rookies," Haku explained. "Everyone looking for a quick win with _assume_ they lack experience."

"Assume?" Kaya asked. "Oh. Right."

Hano laughed at some secret joke. "I guess nothing attracts a hungry dog like fresh meat, but some poor little puppy's going to choke." He stood up and stretched. "So, as long as we're supposed to be observing weaknesses, have you got anything yet?"

"So far, it's difficult to do anything besides speculate. Right now they're cautious, but later—"

"Exactly!" Hano interrupted. "Right now, I see some hundred plus shinobi trying to look cool for each other, and honestly they're not doing a very good job. I say we do a little…experiment."

"Hold on a second," Kaya said, narrowing her eyes. "What kind of experiment are you planning?"

"Well, Haku said that everyone is too cautious, so…" He let the implication hang in the air.

"…So?"

Hano let out a large, despairing sigh, then jumped up, doing half a flip and landing upside down on the ceiling.

"Hey, excuse me, everyone! Could I say something? I'd like to say something real quick." Nearly every shinobi in the room looked at him with expressions ranging from confusion to disgust. "Yes, thank you. So my friend Kaya here once told me that if you put enough putrid, revolting, half-witted morons in one place, time would stop. So right now I'm looking at my watch, and I'd like to thank all of you nice people for _proving her wrong!_"

Amidst the howls of rage, several kunai, a few senbon dripping in what Hano hoped was poison, and at least one jumbo sized shuriken flew at him, and Hano jumped to the floor behind Haku with a yelp.

"Are you _crazy,_ Hano?" Kaya nearly shrieked.

"I think you've asked me that before."

"That was rather reckless of you," Haku said calmly. "I'd rather you not do that sort of thing in the future."

"Yeah, but it worked, didn't it?"

Haku smiled, looking at the crowd, holding his senbon just in case someone tried throwing something else. "Yes, you've shattered their stone masks quite well. I can work with this," Haku said, noting which genin took offense, which attacked, and which flat out ignored him.

Hano yelped in pain as Kaya pulled out a senbon that was stuck in his arm. Haku managed to deflect most of the projectiles, but even he had his limits.

"You'll want to suck out the poison before it festers," Kaya lectured.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "But first, I want to find out if this is the kind of poison that makes your muscles cramp up until it stops your heart, or if it just dissolves your blood vessels and makes you bleed internally."

With a growl of frustration, Kaya grabbed his arm and sucked out the poison herself.

"Ow! You bit me!" he complained.

"Well, you should have done it yourself! I swear, sometimes I feel like I'm dealing with a five year old."

WWW

The shinobi stood with long black hair falling past his shoulders, his delicate features so pale they might have been covered in a sheet of ice. His dark brown eyes glistened…not fiercely, but protectively, carefully watching the genin in the room. Time and time again, Shikamaru's eyes fell to the senbon the shinobi held in his fingers.

_You're being irrational, _Shikamaru told himself. _It's impossible. There is no logical reason why _he_ would be _here. He told himself that, again and again, trying to shake the conviction that the shinobi's height, weapon choice, hair, and posture were something other than nerves.

It didn't work.

"Hey, Sasuke," he called. "See that shinobi over there with the senbon? Does he look familiar to you?"

Sasuke stared at the mist nin for a moment before shaking his head.

"Okay, but imagine him wearing a white mask of a kiri hunter nin."

"…ah."

"You see it?"

"See what?" Sakura asked, stepping in.

"Remember that mission with the bridge builder and the guy with the giant sword?" Shikamaru asked. "I can't shake the feeling that that shinobi over there looks a lot like the guy who was with him."

Sakura peered over at him. "Well…I guess so," she admitted. "But he was wearing a mask at the time. If you just go by height and hair color, a lot of people here match his description, even you could if you wore your hair differently."

"That's true," Sasuke agreed. "Although…" The mist nin noticed them staring at him and looked back at them, neither aggressively nor defensively. _I know you're watching me,_ he seemed to say. _I have nothing to hide._ "There is the matter of senbon. It's a common weapon, but…"

"He deflected a shuriken that could slice through a tree with it," Shikamaru finished.

Sasuke finally shook his head and turned away. "We're grasping at straws here," he muttered. "Even if he _is_ Haku, it doesn't matter."

"What?"

"If he's not him, then he's just taking part in the exams like everyone else. And if he is…" Sasuke's eyes darkened and his teeth seemed to glisten behind an eager, controlled grin. "I've been hoping for a rematch with that guy."

Across the room, the mist nin said something to his teammate—the one with the death wish. The other shinobi looked at Shikamaru and his team and started laughing.

_No,_ Shikamaru thought. _It does matter._ Sasuke had been unconscious at the time, and Sakura blocked by a veil of mist, but Shikamaru had been right there. He watched his teammate "die" before he caught Haku in his shadow, and when Zabuza died, he wasn't feeling merciful. He made Haku watch too.

But the way Haku struggled, writhed against his constraints, the way he screamed when Kakashi-sensei drove his hand through Zabuza's chest…it was a thing that Shikamaru couldn't forget. It was a thing that would haunt his nightmares.

_No,_ he decided. _If Haku comes after us in the exam…_well, there was a reason Shikamaru was called Konoha's Number One Coward.

WWW

a/n A few words by way of explaination. Hoshui is a character developed by my friend Racheakt, who recently became my coauthor instead of just my beta, by the way. He explained it like this:

"I built the idea of Hoshui on the question: 'was that guy Orochimaru impersonating during the Chuunin exams an actual Sound Shinobi? Or was he just a disguise?'

It seems unlikely that Orochimaru would just choose a disguise that resembled himself so closely- not when infiltrating an enemy base during a period of intensified security, not when his face was so well-known. That would bring him unwanted scrutiny.

Why that particular face then? The answer is simple: There was already a Sound shinobi with a well-known face that looked like him, who he killed and used his face-peeling jutsu on. The man already looked like him, so any Hyuuga or similar detector would (presumably) miss the deception. There was no genjutsu to be dispelled, and, knowing the face of the shinobi he was impersonating, Konoha would not pay any special attention to him. He was even supposed to be there, so no-one gave him a second glance, hiding in plain sight, genius!"

In this story, instead of killing Hoshui and taking his face, Orochimaru just sent him ahead to be the sound nin's sensei.

Regarding Idate and Yakumo, my original plan was to have Shino, Ino, Chouji, and Kiba on a team of four, but you never see any teams of four. It would be too much work to make two OC's to make two teams of three, so I just used characters from the anime. Remember the eighty consecutive episodes of fillers? Yakumo appeared near the end. Idate is Morino Ibiki's little brother who left Konoha after failing the chunin exam. In this, both are participating genin. I'll explain more about the teams in the next chapter. Thanks for all the reviews, by the way. You people are awesome.


	4. Those who Favor Fire

Konoha no Mai

Chapter Four

a/n I own nothing. Also, forgive me for my bad transitions.

Some say the world will end in fire,  
Some say in ice.  
From what I've tasted of desire  
I hold with those who favor fire.  
_Fire and Ice-_Robert Frost

The clock ticked, the seconds past, and the chunin exam had begun. Over a hundred genin sat in another room, forcing ideas and desperation out of their inexperienced skulls.

Meanwhile four Konoha jounin brooded in a lounge as nervous as prospective fathers awaiting the birth of their first-born. Kurenai fidgeted with her fingers absent mindedly, Kakashi sat slouched with his head down, not even reading the book he always kept with him, Asuma chain smoked, using one cigarette to light the next, and Kabuto? Kabuto analyzed them.

Kabuto glanced down at his notes in consternation.

_Is __this __what I do when I'm nervous?_ he wondered, flipping over a card. He kept his notes in personal info cards, much more secure than ink and paper.

"The first exam is halfway done," Asuma said, noting the clock. "If they're still in there…no, the very end is when everyone starts to get sloppy."

Only the jounin sensei of the rookie teams were in the room. The Rookie Twelve, they were already called. Whether they stood for preeminent skill, the future of Konoha, or death-tempting bravado remained to be seen. They sat apart from the other jounin because most of the others were part of the third opinion, which lent itself little to camaraderie.

"How many people usually get through the first exam?" Kurenai asked. "Statistically, I mean."

"About half," Kabuto said. "Thirty-five to sixty percent of the genin fail the first exam, fifty to seventy in the second, and if there are still more than ten left, there may be a preliminary round before the third exam." The other three jounin stared at him. "What? I retook the chunin exam a few times and I had my eyes open."

"Really?" Kakashi asked. "I heard you passed the jounin exam on the first try."

"Yeah, well, I thought it would be more impressive if my whole team passed together. Besides, it was good research. The jounin exam is just the chunin exam with sleeker traps anyways."

That was close enough to the truth, at least. Did they know what finally catapulted him through the two most challenging challenges of a shinobi's career? Probably. Most jounin kept their own Bingo Book, and while that was intended for only missing nin, anyone could become a missing nin eventually. Either way, it didn't matter if they knew why he did it as long as they didn't know how.

"While we're waiting, anyone care to make a few bets?" Kabuto asked.

"Bets?" Kakashi asked incredulously. "What is it with med nin and gambling?"

"Tradition!" he said brightly. "Besides, what are a few bucks among people who toy with death every week? So, who's in?"

"I'll do it," Asuma volunteered. "You said that half the genin fail this? I'll wager 5,000 ryo that my team will be one of the ones that pass, at even odds." 5,000 ryo was how much a D-rank mission was worth.

"I'll take you up on that," Kurenai offered. "And I'll bet 10,000 ryo that my students will pass."

"Deal."

Kakashi leaned back and looked at the ceiling thoughtfully. "This isn't a horse race, it's an exam," he said. "I couldn't bet against my own students even if I wanted to. Heck, they'd probably get upset if they found out that I didn't bet on them."

"You don't think that they'll pass?"

"No, it's just the opposite. They're a sure bet, so much that I'd feel guilty about betting on them at one to one odds." Kakashi didn't talk like he was boasting, he said it like it was a fact. Whether he said that just to provoke his peers into a bolder offer or because he actually believed it, Kabuto couldn't tell, but knowing Kakashi…well, Kabuto didn't know Kakashi, not really.

"Why don't we try a different bet?" Kabuto offered. "Each of the four teams has a fifty percent chance of passing, so I'll bet you at sixteen to one odds that all of our teams will pass."

"Sixteen to one?" Kakashi's eye opened perceptively.

"Sure. One half to the fourth, one over sixteen."

Kakashi hesitated. "Didn't one of your students get a median test score of zero in the academy? That takes talent, sure, but I doubt it's the kind Ibiki's looking for."

"Yeah, but that's the funny thing about betting," Kabuto smiled. "I remember a patient once, a woman suffering from cancer. Her son came to me and bet me a large sum of money that she would live. If she died, he'd get a lot of cash as a consolation prize, and if she lived, he got to skip a funeral. Some people bet like that, they like to keep their bases covered. Either way, they win. On the other hand, they also lose both ways. But regardless, you know the risks, you know the odds, I made the offer. You can accept or decline."

Suspicion lurked in Kakashi's one visible eye. Kabuto smiled politely back at him. He had mastered the sort of smile that suggests to the beholder exactly what he doesn't want to believe, regardless of if it's true. Really, Kabuto didn't care about the money. Money was incredible, though. People pay attention to it. As long as there's money on the table, no one notices how many knives are hidden under it.

Finally, Kakashi spoke. "How about ten to one?"

WWW

Inside the exam room, Kimimaro wished that he had learned Morse Code.

Hinata had finished the exam within the first five minutes. Her abilities were perfect for this sort of test, and she put her head down on her desk and sat quietly. Kimimaro communicated with her by mouthing words to her with his hands over his mouth, but Hinata couldn't respond except for rudimentary sign language. Yes, no, higher, lower. It took forever, but Kimimaro finished.

Naruto, however, was completely hopeless.

Naruto never looked up, he never looked away from his test. It was as though he thought that it was the sort of test that he could figure out just by thinking about it. Hinata motioned to Kimimaro that he wasn't having any success.

If he would just look up, they could work together as a team. Wasn't Kabuto-sensei always telling them about that? _"If you fight alone, you die alone. Use your strengths to complement your teammate's weaknesses, and your weaknesses to complement their strengths."_

To the side, Ibiki's invigilators watched to make sure no one cheated, but they weren't looking at Kimimaro specifically. Under the desks, Kimimaro had a clear line between him and Naruto. He eased one of his distal phalanges through the skin in his fingers, pointed at Naruto, and fired.

Naruto jolted and rubbed the back of his neck where the bone hit. With an annoyed expression on his face, Naruto glared at his test without looking up.

Kimimaro readied his finger bones for another shot. _This can't be the best idea I can come up with._

WWW

"You're late. I'm a busy man, and I don't have time to wait around all day for someone who _might_ show up."

"I keep paranoid company. The chances I have to leave unquestioned do not follow predictable intervals, and if anyone as much as hears us speaking together, there could be some rather questionable, blood-stained absences."

"Hear us? I'm a sound nin, not a cloud nin."

"And I know of a few almost non-fatal surgical operations that can fix that, but as much as I enjoy fraternizing with the enemy, was there not something nontrivial you needed to say?"

"He wants a report. Deliver the top three candidates to me at the end of the survival exam, and make sure they're up to date."

"My reports are always up to date, if you want them now. But I'm not going to give them to you at all, am I? He wants to take them personally."

"Let's just say that he wants to keep that option open. Don't forget, this isn't one of your morbid curiosities, this is about the future, so no games, no nonsense, no mistakes."

"Sounds like fun."

"I take the future seriously."

"Wonderful. Now, out of respect for your future, I suggest you let go of my arm, or we could end up with a blood-stained absence anyway. He trusts me, so if you have any doubts, kindly place them where the sun does not shine."

"Trusts you? Your only redeeming quality is that you're a born traitor."

"And he's a snake. Which leaves me to wonder, where do hopeless idealists fit into that future of yours? Best of luck to your students."

"Same to you."

WWW

"Time's up."

_Not yet!_ Hinata had been finished for a while, and Kimimaro had finished his test too, but Naruto…

"Now it's time for the tenth question," Ibiki said. He looked like he was carved from stone with a sheet of skin rolled over like wallpaper, and his skin itself was scarred horribly, as though he was routinely stabbed and lit on fire. As much as Hinata tried not to judge by appearances, she doubted that he'd give them an extra five minutes.

"Before we begin the tenth question," Ibiki continued, "there are a few rules that you need to know. If you get the question wrong, you fail the chunin exam, permanently. There are no second chances in life, and neither are there here. You will walk out that door, and you will never be able to take the chunin exam again. You may decide to opt out of the tenth question, but if you do, you and your entire team will fail and will have to wait until next time. That is all."

A dead silence filled the room. Then it was broken.

"Are you freaking kidding me?" someone shouted out.

"Yeah, lots of people failed this exam before, and they got to retake it!"

"They had a different examiner," Ibiki said. "These are my rules. You will abide by them, or you will leave."

Hinata looked at her paper. She managed to get the first nine questions, and if the tenth question was anything like it, she'd be fine. She wouldn't bring the team down this time.

"I'm out," a shinobi said, the only one in the room brave enough to be the first coward. "I'm sorry." His teammates were identified and excused.

Naruto's paper was completely blank. Kimimaro stopped at seven out of nine to focus on getting Naruto's attention, so even if they all got the tenth question right and all of the ones they had written down, what was the team score? Nineteen out of thirty, sixty percent or so. How many points did they need to pass? Fifteen? Twenty? And if they got caught cheating a few times, they could have as few as eleven total.

"I can't do this," someone else said. "Sorry, but there's always next year, right?"

They would fail no matter what. The only difference the tenth question made was whether they'd be able to take the exam again. They gained nothing by taking it. They gained nothing by going forward. And yet…Naruto knew this too, didn't he? Why didn't he say anything yet?

Hinata glanced at Naruto over her shoulder. He sat stone faced, jaw clenched, eyes straight ahead. _"I'm going to be Hokage someday, the greatest Hokage ever!"_ he always said. _"I won't back down. I won't _ever _back down!" Never back down…never back down…_even if it means losing everything? _Never…back…_Naruto might be able to live like that, but if he failed, Kimimaro would become chunin, and even Hinata would eventually. Naruto would be left behind, stuck forever as a genin, until he disappeared entirely.

And he'd do it too, before sacrificing his own personal nindo. _"If you're not willing to live and die for what you believe in, you don't believe in anything at all."_ Kimimaro had said that once. _And what do I believe in? _Hinata thought. _I believe…that no one should be left behind._ She was always being passed by, by her younger sister, by other ninja, by everyone. But her team had been willing to wait for her, Kabuto was always giving her extra lessons, and Naruto and Kimimaro never looked down on her or resented her.

She wouldn't let that happen. She wouldn't let Naruto get left behind.

"I quit."

Hinata didn't say it. It was a kunochi sitting directly in front of her. She stood up and started walking towards the door.

"Darn it, Ryou!" yelled one of her teammates. "You always got to bring us down, you always have to be the deadweight on the team!"

"Out," Ibiki said, motioning towards the door. The kunochi's two teammates left, glaring at her the whole way.

Could Hinata do that to her team too? She'd do it to help, but would they see it that way? Would she leave, with them hating her? Could she let that stop her? Did she even have the right?

"This is stupid!" Naruto stood up and glared at the instructor. "I'm not going to run away, and I won't be scared off by some scar-faced big shot in a trench coat! The only difference that failing this question of yours will make is that I'll have to be the first genin Hokage ever, and then I'll fire you for making such a stupid rule!"

Ibiki gave him a cold stare. "If that is your final decision…"

"It is. I don't back down, and I never go back on my word."

"If that is your final decision," Ibiki said again, "then sit down, shut-up, and be quiet before I find something else to throw you out of here for." Naruto sat down quickly and took a deep breath, as though shocked by his own audacity. Ibiki looked over the remaining participators, looking each one of them in the eye. "Very well then. You all pass."

"Yes! Wait, what?"

"We…but…huh?"

"This exam had two distinct parts," Ibiki explained. "The first was to test your information gathering abilities. If you are discovered while spying on an enemy during a mission, you may be killed, but you may be fed false information instead. If you are caught in a classroom, you and your team fail. If you are caught on a mission, you, your team, and anyone else involved can die. The fact that you are still here proves that can, whether individually or as a team, gather information without being caught."

"The tenth question was about faith. Every mission has risks, and you won't know about all of them. Will you back down, or will you take that leap of faith into the jaws of death? Sometimes it's not as dangerous as you think. But sometimes…" Ibiki took the bandana off his head. "Sometimes it is much, much worse."

Ibiki's scalp was a mesh of burns and scars. Where his skin wasn't scorched off or slashed open, it was gouged out by screws.

"As chunin, you will have to proceed with the mission, knowing that worse than this can happen to you," Ibiki said, replacing his bandana. "But since this is just an exam, you who have not backed down will have to make do with the surviv—"

_CRASH!_

Something burst through the window, showering the front of the room with broken glass.

"Alright, you lot, my name is Mitarashi Anko and—man there are a lot of you left." The kunochi who had crashed through the window scanned the room with distaste. "Hey, Ibiki, I'm not early, am I? You said you'd take an hour, you started at nine, it's ten, so you are finished, yeah? Because I can come back later if you want to get rid of a few more of these guys."

"I am quite finished with the written exam, Anko," he said. "I was merely in the middle of an object lesson when you…entered."

"Object lesson? Man, you give the torture and interrogation unit a bad name."

"Regardless, the moment is thoroughly ruined, so you have no reason not to proceed."

"Yeah. Sure. Anyway, I know _I've_ had enough of this stuffy old class room, so let's get out of here. We're heading for the Forest of Death."

WWW

Even by Konoha's standards, the Forest of Death was impossibly old. Most of the trees were ten to twenty feet thick and were centuries older than the village itself. A chain link fence surrounded the forest, and the shadows were so thick they seemed almost solid.

All of the rookie twelve passed the exam. That alone was notable, but the way Naruto stood up—no, _challenged_ the instructor…Hinata smiled. He passed the written exam several times over in her book, _with a blank paper._

She looked around at the others who had passed. A warrior should be able to know her opponent with a single blow, and a Hyuuga with a single glance. Hinata looked around and saw…nothing. Well, that wasn't completely true. She saw that Haku had a distant expression on his face as Hano chattered inanely. She saw that two members of a team from the Sand kept their distance and an eye on their smallest member. Team nine was even more disjointed. Yakumo was sitting against the fence, drawing in her sketchbook, Idate was on the other side of the clearing leaning against a tree, and Ino was sharing snarky comments with Sakura. Shino alone stood in the shade of a tree, almost as much of a statue as Kimimaro, Kiba had a dog on his head, and Chouji stood next to him munching contentedly on a bag of potato chips. On Neji's team—Neji made eye contact and Hinata looked away quickly.

"Right, so first things first," Anko said. "For this next exam, some of you might not come back alive. And the rest of you, well, definitely won't, so if you want to take the survival portion of the exam, you'll have to sign these nice little waver forms. I don't want to have to deal with your mother's lawyer when she finds out that you've been eaten by a giant slug."

"Second of all, you need to—_you_ need to pay attention, because I'm not going to repeat myself." She spoke pointedly at Yakumo.

"You have my undivided attention," Yakumo replied in an unperturbed monotone. She turned her sketchbook around to show what she was drawing. "I have your face already. Now I just need your throat."

Anko squinted at the drawing and grinned. "Dang, I look pretty good. But anyway, second of all, you need to know about the rules of engagement," she continued. "There aren't any. So if you run into a team from a village that you really hate, then remember that what happens in the Forest of Death stays in the Forest of Death. Or what happens in the Forest of Death moves on, and whoever they happened to stays."

"Finally, objectives. Each team will get either an earth scroll or a heaven scroll. You have five days to beat the crap out of another team so you have one of each, and make it to the tower in the middle of the forest. If you don't make it within five days, you fail. If you break the seal of the scroll, you fail. If you let a teammate die, you fail and you're a lousy team player. So that's it. Any question? Comments? Snide remarks?"

"Ooh! I got one!" Naruto called out.

"_Don't try to stand out!"_ Anko hurled a kunai at him that grazed his cheek. "If you try to stand out, you end up dead." She picked up the kunai from the ground and licked the blood off. "Then again, everyone dies eventually, so stand out all you want. Hey, kid, you're not B positive, are you?"

"Uh, sure."

"That must suck. But if that's all, then good luck to all of you, goodbye to a lot of you, and don't bother me again till the end of the week." Anko turned and left them to their choices, their paper work, and their fate.

WWW

_a/n Man, it feels good to be writing this story again. I mean, Code Geass? Really? Why was I spending so much time with that anyway? I think I wrote this whole chapter in less than a week after I decided to get down a do it, and stop losing my flash drive every half chapter. Man, that's annoying. _

_Anyway, the next chapter will be out in a timely manner, mostly because I was about half done when Racheakt told me that I should split the next chapter into two. Just to clarify something, in the canon Kurenai's team was team eight, but since I wasn't planning to use her originally, Kabuto's team is number eight. Now that I am using her, she's in charge of team nine. _

_Man, I love to talk. Will I never shut up? But yeah, until the next chapter._


	5. Two Roads

Konoha no Mai

Chapter Five

a/n I own nothing

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

_The Road Not Taken-_Robert Frost

_Kunai? _About twenty, check. _Rope?_ Check. _Explosive tags? _Hahaha, definitely check. Naruto remembered that demonstration very well.

"Hey? I'd like to buy these," Naruto said to the store clerk.

The woman in charge of the store was a middle aged brunette with her hair in twin buns who looked…vaguely familiar, but Naruto couldn't quite place it. "It comes to 12,000 ryo."

"_12,000?_ That…that's…" Kunai were a dime a dozen, and rope was pretty cheap too, but tags… "How can you justify charging so much for little pieces of paper…that explode on demand…and…well, I guess I could go with just the rope and kunai, but…"

"I'll pay for it."

Naruto turned around. "Kabuto-sensei! Thanks! I really need the—wait a second. You're loaning me money. You never loan money. To anyone!" He eyed his sensei suspiciously. "What's going on that I don't know about?"

"You just helped me make some money just now, so I figured, why not?" he said as he paid the clerk. "Also, isn't there an exam you need to attend?"

"I'm getting supplies," Naruto explained as they walked out the door. "We don't have to be at Gate Thirteen of the Forest of Death until noon, and if that's not lucky, I don't know what is."

"Clearly."

"Also, how did I help you make money? You didn't publish any of my secret jutsu, did you? Because if you did—"

"No, I just bet on you. Well, mostly you. You were the clause that got me ten to one odds. Evidently you were no one's favorite to pass the first exam."

"The first exam? Hah! I mopped the floor with that exam!"

"Yeah, sure you did." He glanced around, but no one was listening. "Also, I wanted to ask you about your bloodline."

(I still don't know if this really fits. Naruto knows about the Kyubii. Kabuto ought to know about the Kyubii as well. It might make more sense to have a brief exposition on the kyubii, and have the pills do something that would otherwise be fatal without the healing factor. Just a thought.)

"My bloodline?" On one of their earlier missions, the one when they met Haku, Naruto…lost control. He lost it badly. He thought that Hinata had died, and then, well, he wasn't really sure what had happened after that. Kimimaro had said that his eyes had turned red so they figured that he had some bloodline that no one knew about. It made sense, in a way. Kimimaro had a bloodline and Hinata had one too, so it was only fair. "I haven't been able to activate it since, you know, the first time."

"Well, I think I may have something to help you with that." Kabuto handed him three small pills.

"Soldier pills?" Naruto asked, sniffing them. "I've used soldier pills before, and they didn't activate my bloodline at all."

"These aren't soldier pills. For a soldier pill to work, it has to throw your metabolism into overdrive, flood your body with enzymes to break down body fat and stored energy, and process that into chakra faster than you can breathe in enough oxygen to normally sustain the reaction. It leaves a load of unwanted chemical waste in your system that your body needs to get rid of afterwards, but still it can be useful in an emergency. These are soldier pills done wrong. The beneficial enzymes don't break down correctly, and when inside your cells it merely—" Kabuto stopped suddenly. "I can tell by that blank look in your eyes that you're following me. Basically, these may force your, uh, bloodline, to activate."

Naruto's jaw dropped. "Really?" Having a bloodline was pretty cool—if it was a bloodline. The only alternative was, well, Naruto would rather leave that skeleton in the closet. But the only thing better than having a bloodline would be having one that he could actually use.

"They are, however, toxic," Kabuto continued. "On delicate spying missions, shinobi sometimes use these as—and I say this seriously, Naruto—suicide pills."

"Suicide pills?" Naruto yelped. "You're giving me suicide pills? What kind of sensei are you?"

"Do you want to be quiet for a moment and let me explain?" Kabuto said. "Also, not so loud. You have a naturally superior healing rate, and if I'm right and your bloodline is an enhancement of your natural abilities, as bloodlines usually are to some degree, then—"

"Wait, what about my healing rate?"

"Oh, yeah, I studied a tissue sample, and—"

"What? When did you get a tissue sample?"

"That's not important. Anyway—"

"But—"

"Not important. Anyway, bloodlines tend to develop as a defense mechanism, so if you take one of these pills, they may force your bloodline to activate to save your life. On the other hand, it may just kill you."

Naruto swallowed. "I'm not sure I like the sound of that."

"You know what? That's great, because you're not supposed to," Kabuto said. "This is a last resort, and _only_ a last resort. If you can surrender or run away, go for it. On the third exam, there will be someone to end the fight before someone gets killed, but during the survival exam, well, sometimes you have to take desperate risks."

Naruto took the pills and put them in his pocket. "Hey, Kabuto-sensei? You're not going away or anything, are you?"

Kabuto smiled. "Go away? Now why would you think something like that?"

"Well, I know that if I were going to leave town, I'd light a building on fire or T.P. the Hokage Tower before I left, and I wouldn't be able to get in trouble for it, and what you're doing sounds a lot like the same thing."

Kabuto laughed. "Don't light any buildings on fire, especially if you can't lay the blame on someone else. I'll see you after the second exam, assuming you live. And Naruto? I really hope you live. I might even bet on you again."

WWW

Kabuto found Hinata buying medical supplies and a week's supply of food pills. "You're looking at a pretty bleak camping trip, Hinata."

"Kabuto-sensei!" she said with a smile. "Food pills are lighter than real food, and we can forage in the forest."

Kabuto hesitated. He had wanted to give his team some advice before they started the next portion of the exam, but what could he give to the person that he had already given some of his best jutsu, all the information he could cram into her head, and the equivalent of a medical degree? "Hinata? During this exam, don't take unnecessary risks. If your teammates get hurt, you can heal them, but if you get hurt, no one can help you."

Hinata frowned. "Kabuto-sensei, I…that sounds cowardly," she said. "I didn't become a mednin so I could hide behind my friends, and I can't stand back and let my team risk their lives when I know I can make a difference."

Kabuto laughed. "I haven't met a single mednin who didn't say exactly that same thing at least once, but if you're on a team, you have to think like one. If you sacrificed Naruto's life on a mission, you wouldn't be proud of it. There is no difference to your team if you sacrifice your own life, and there is no more honor in it."

Hinata didn't answer.

"Let me put it in another way. Do you know why I spent so much time teaching you medical ninjutsu? It's not because you needed the most help, it's because you're the only one who could learn. Sure, the others can understand basic first aid, but I have seen people study medicine for years and not be able to do half of what you can. If you want to, you have the aptitude to be the greatest mednin ever, so let the frontline soldiers take the front. You just focus on keeping them alive."

Hinata frowned, but she nodded. The girl had the poker face of a window, and Kabuto could tell she was having doubts. "I understand," she said finally. Kabuto hoped she wasn't lying.

WWW

Kabuto found Kimimaro at Gate Thirteen of the Forest of Death. Kimimaro followed orders unquestioningly, was loyal, disciplined. He was a perfect soldier through and through. He seemed to be thinking of something, but Kabuto couldn't tell what.

"So I found Hinata and Naruto buying supplies," Kabuto said, "but you're just waiting here. Why is that?"

"I have everything I need already," He said. He didn't even seem surprised at Kabuto's presence, like he was already aware of him before he spoke. "Also, the instructor said that the exam would start at noon, but we have no reason to suspect that she wouldn't change her mind."

"Well, let's say she did. Hinata could find everyone with her eyes, and Naruto could send out shadow clone scouts, but what could you do?"

"I…I would think of something."

Kabuto blew out an exasperated sigh. What was so hard about teamwork that…oh well. "I'm going to suppose that you're looking at this exam like a mission."

"Of course," Kimimaro replied. "There's danger, the team, and an objective. How else would I look at it?"

"I'm not objecting to anything. Though if this is a mission, what's your objective?"

"To bring both scrolls to the central tower within five days."

"Sorry, I meant your primary objective."

"I…that was my primary objective, Kabuto-sensei."

"Then let me enlighten you. If you manage to pass this exam, the only thing that would happen is that you'd get a lot of fame and prestige that will _haunt_ you for the rest of your life. Even if you get the chance to win, I wouldn't advise it. On the other hand, if you fail this exam, there's always next year. The only bad thing that could happen, is if one of you dies. That's why your primary objective, Kimimaro, is to make sure no one dies."

He nodded. "Understood, Kabuto-sensei."

"Now, wandering around in the wilderness, surrounded by enemies, this should be right up your ally, right? What with everything before you came to Konoha."

"That is correct, sensei."

"Then that means that you're in charge. Despite everything, Naruto and Hinata don't have your experience in this sort of thing."

"Understood," Kimimaro said. "In the event that we engage fellow Konoha shinobi, what should we do?"

"Don't kill them if you can avoid it, but if you can't, then remember that anyone you can defeat is worth less to the village then you are. Konoha needs people who can protect more than it needs people to protect, and you won't help you village by sacrificing yourself out of mercy, because Konoha's true enemies certainly won't," Kabuto said. "Though, as team leader, the people you're fighting are again your second priority."

Kimimaro nodded. "I will not allow my team to die."

"There's a lot more to it than that, Kimimaro. As a team, you'll have to watch each other's backs, but as team leader, you have to understand your teammates, something that you've never bothered to do because, honestly, you've never cared to. You think that you're the center of your own story, and Naruto thinks that it's all about him, and even Hinata sees things mostly from her own perspective. You know what your teammates can do, but you don't know what their loves, fears, their aspirations, and as team leader, you _must_ overcome that."

Kimimaro looked down in shame for a moment, then nodded. "I will not disappoint you again, sensei."

Kabuto felt he should say something else, but he had no idea what. These were his students. He trained them, they knew how to handle themselves. And as for what the Otokage was planning, well, if he didn't want Kabuto's students to interfere, he should have told him what was going on.

"I guess that's all," Kabuto said finally. "I'll see you in a few days.

WWW

Haku stood before the forest, waiting for his team's turn to get a scroll. Of course the exam would favor those more familiar with the local flora and fauna, but Konoha didn't have a neutral ground to have the survival exam on. If they were taking the exams in Suna, Haku's ninjutsu would be practically useless, but here, all they would have to worry about would be eating something toxic.

"Hey, can I borrow a senbon?" Hano asked suddenly.

"What do you need a senbon for?"

"To sign the waiver form. I can't take the exam without signing the waiver."

"You don't need to sign it in blood," Haku explained. "That's for summoning scrolls. For legal documents you just need a pen."

"Oh. I don't have one of those either. Can I have one anyway?"

"You can have a pen."

"Huh. Well, thanks anyway, Haku."

Nearby, Sasuke perked his head up. "Haku?" he asked. "I thought you seemed familiar. You look a lot different without the mask."

Haku figured that Kakashi's team would recognize him eventually, but he hadn't been looking forward to it. "Yes, I get that a lot," he said. "You look well, Sasuke."

"I must say I'm surprised to see you here. I know it's none of my business, but weren't you a missing nin a few months back? Did you just decide to quit one morning or what?"

"Wait a second," Kaya interrupted. "This guy knew you from when you were missing too?"

"He was part of the first Konoha team I encountered."

"Oh, that one?" Hano asked. "Odd. He doesn't _smell_ like a vampire. If I had to say, I'd say he smells like…"

"I don't play games, Haku," Sasuke said. "What are you really here for? And don't say it's just to make it to chunin."

"Bark. Or is that the forest?"

"Let me ask you a question," Haku said. "If there was someone important to you, and some people killed him in front of you and made you watch, what would you do?"

"Salt! Yeah, that's it."

"I'd hunt him down and destroy him," Sasuke replied.

"It seems that you still do not understand true strength, Sasuke. And that is why we may never see eye to eye."

WWW

Kimimaro stared into the thousand shadows cast by the endless trees. "We need a plan," he said.

"We need a lot of things," Naruto replied. "But we're in a place we've never been before surrounded by people we've never met before who can do things that we've never seen before. If you can plan for that, great, but I say we just wander around until we find someone, beat them up and swipe their shoes, and keep it up until we get the right scroll."

"I'm not going to ask you why you want to take their shoes, Naruto, but—"

"So they can't chase after us."

Kimimaro gave him a cold stare. "I'm not going to ask you why, but it's possible that we could fight half the teams here and not get a heaven scroll."

Naruto laughed. "If that did happen, we'd have all the earth scrolls, and do you know how many people would pass the exam then? _And_ we'd all get new shoes. I know I need some. And thirdly—or…fourthly?—last of all, we might get lucky and get a heaven scroll on the first try."

"Luck runs out," Kimimaro said darkly. "I'll not risk the exam on her fickle favors. There is a way we can find someone who certainly has the right scroll; we just find a team that has both. Eventually, everyone with both scrolls will go to the tower. If we catch them before they finish the exam, we can end this in one precise fight."

It was a good plan, Hinata decided. Bold and dangerous, but good, assuming that they could handle a team that had already defeated another. If anyone asked her for ideas, she would have suggested that they wait in one place and set up traps. They were rookies, inexperienced and presumed weak. Plenty of teams would come to them looking for an easy mark, so they wouldn't have to wait long. But no one asked her, and she kept her mouth shut.

WWW

Team Seven stood at the outskirts of the forest as they decided on their plan.

"I know that look," Shikamaru said. "That's the look you have when you're thinking about doing everything the hard way, just to cause trouble."

"That so?"

"Yes, Sasuke, yes. In this entire deathtrap of an exam, there is one person who has nearly killed both of us, and I can tell that you want to hunt down his team. Well, there are plenty of teams here, so why don't we look for one that might actually be weaker than us?"

"We could," Sasuke admitted. "Although…Haku has every reason to come after us. He did say that he wouldn't go out of his way to kill us, but I'd trust him a lot more if he were dead."

"I would too," Shikamaru admitted, "but just think about it for ten seconds. We won last time because we could gang up on him. Now he has a team, so we can fight him one on one, or wait until after the survival portion and you could fight him one on one. Frankly, our teamwork sucks, so I suggest you wait for later, and that's not just because he scares me."

"What do you mean our teamwork sucks?" Sakura demanded.

"He's not referring to you, he's referring to me," Sasuke said. "Which is odd because last time we fought someone together, he sacrificed me, not the other way around."

"You were already dead, Sasuke!" Shikamaru argued. "We both were. Besides, what does it matter now?"

"You're right. I'm not usually the kind of guy to hold a grudge. I don't know what's wrong with me," Sasuke said ironically. "But you have a point. And even if I wanted to face him now, we don't have a good chance of finding him within the week."

"Yeah, we should focus on getting a scroll and passing the exam," Sakura agreed. She glanced at Shikamaru. "Any ideas?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I've been thinking about this, and I think we should do nothing for a few days."

Sakura rolled her eyes. "And just when I thought you couldn't get any lazier."

"I'm being serious," he said. "Every day, the weakest teams fail, and the strongest move on. If we face a team slightly stronger than us, we can run, but if they're a lot stronger, they might kill us. In a few days, the strongest will be gone."

Sakura frowned, and then conceded. She had a good head on her shoulders, but it was mostly in the past, memorizing facts and remembering details. Sasuke could see a few steps ahead, but he focused on the present. The team left the planning to him.

"A few traps won't go amiss, then," Sasuke decided.

"Yeah, you do that," Shikamaru said as he lied down to look at the clouds. "Let me know if you need me to move."

Sakura gave him a dirty look, but never complained too much about a chance to get rid of the "third wheel," as she called him. He didn't care. He had more important things to think about, like what Haku was doing here. He was a missing nin last time they met, or at least was working with one. Legitimizing his position wouldn't be easy, but Shikamaru knew too little about the Hidden Mist to know how hard. Shikamaru was sure Haku was already chunin level, so why didn't he just test out of the exam? Could they do that in the Hidden Mist?

Part of him thought that Haku might have lied about his abilities just to take the exam…somehow knowing that team Seven would be taking it…at the same time…just to get back at them. That was pretty far-fetched, actually.

Shikamaru closed his eyes and remembered the day they fought, trapped between his frozen mirrors, how he killed Sasuke, how he had Haku caught in his shadow, how they watched that missing nin with the big sword—what was his name, Zabuza?—how they watched him die. No matter how hard he tried, Shikamaru couldn't forget his scream. That was not the sound of a man breaking. That was the sound of a man being shattered. A few minutes later, Shikamaru's friend came back to life, but Haku's friend…didn't.

It was pretty far-fetched for Haku to come all the way back to get revenge on them, Shikamaru decided, but not impossible.

WWW

The forest was old, older than the village itself. Yakumo didn't know how many times exams were held in this forest…

"Well, we're not going to catch a scroll standing around here," Idate said.

…or how many have died in this place, but it must have…

"Hey, Idate," Ino replied. "I have an idea. Why don't we try not to do anything stupid until _after_ we leave a place that has the word death in its name? I'd rather not get killed here, if it's all the same to you."

…been a countless number. And as the shinobi spilt their blood among the branches, it fell…

"Well, dying was on my to-do list, but if you're going to be all uptight about it, I'll just cross it off then," Idate said.

…onto the ground. No…into the ground. And into the roots.

"But if we just wait around here, we're bound to run into somebody that we don't want to," he went on.

And into the trees.

"On the other hand, if we go, we might walk into another team's trap," Idate continued. "Wait a second, I remember that there's a term for this. Catch twenty-two, is it? Oh crap! We're in a catch twenty-two! We're all doomed!"

Trees of blood. The Forest of Death.

"Wow," Ino scoffed. "We haven't been here fifteen minutes and already you're turning into a spineless puddle of unmanly ooze. We're not doomed, we just have to be careful. In fact, this should be right up your alley, because mortal peril actually _is_ around every corner."

That was the mood that permeated these woods.

"But first things first, we should find a place that isn't so open, right Yakumo? Yakumo?"

These were not trees. They were—Ino snapped her fingers in front of her face. Yakumo glared at her and she stepped back.

"You know I hate it when you do that," she said.

"Sorry. But we have to go."

Yakumo nodded and climbed onto Idate's back. It didn't matter where they went, as long as they ended up somewhere where they definitely weren't. From branch to branch they darted, but it wasn't a forest of trees they dove through. They were tombstones, and the knife marks that marred the bark a thousand epitaphs. Konoha sealed the history of this forest with a chain linked fence, and here it remained. She could use that history in her artwork, because when the whole world can run like the wind and you can barely walk, no advantage can be forsaken.

WWW

Neji looked out into the forest with pale, dispassionate eyes. "We only have five days to do this," he said. "Let's make every minute count."

"Right! With so many worthy foes, this exam will be a challenge to remember!" Lee spoke with unbridled enthusiasm, but Lee could watch paint dry with unbridled enthusiasm.

"We'll do surveillance for the first twenty hours, and meet up here at eight o' clock tomorrow morning," Neji said without facing them. "Lee, head northwest, I'll go north, and Tenten, you may stop imitating me behind my back and go northeast."

Tenten stopped mimicking him and grinned. She would stop when it stopped bothering him, and not before. "Sure thing, fearless leader. And if we run into another team?"

"Observe, but do not engage. Any team you can defeat outnumbered three to one doesn't have a scroll we want, and that goes for all of the rookie teams that have wandered in here as well. If you have to, run. I don't expect much of a challenge, but that's no reason to be sloppy."

He didn't say what they should do if they ran into anyone faster than them. But after what Gai-sensei put them through, anyone faster than them deserved to catch them.

Lee took a deep breath, as though breathing in the future. "If we are not the first team to complete the exam, I will hop two hundred laps around Konoha on one foot!" he declared.

If Neji heard him, he gave no sign. "Let's go."

WWW

The smell of damp trees and mold was nearly overwhelming. Kiba wrinkled his nose. He glanced at Akamaru, but the dog was focusing eagerly on a bird's nest and wagging his tail. He'd been like that ever since the team learned that tree climbing technique. Not even Kiba telling him that he was acting like a cat could get him to stop chasing birds out of the trees.

Chouji looked apprehensively into the forest. That guy just didn't get camping. They could travel out to a place that people might never have been before in the history of the world, and then Chouji would grumble something about being out of chips.

And then there was Shino. Kiba couldn't tell whether he liked camping; he claimed indifference. But then again, Shino could probably stick his hand in a blender and say the same thing with a straight face.

"So, are we going or are we going already?" Kiba called out.

"Any unplanned action will only hinder us," Shino said. "I have placed an insect on a member of each of the opposing teams. As long as they stay together, we will not be caught off guard."

"You have?" Kiba asked. "Actually, that's a pretty good idea. So what team's the weakest?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You know, the weakest. I mean, we have to beat up _some_ team for their scroll, and I don't want to attack someone and realize that I've just assaulted team Cthulhu."

Shino shook his head. "I have already explained the nature of the Kikaichu. They do not discriminate. I know the locations of the teams, but the location of no specific team. And even if I did, I lack the necessary information to accurately judge the capabilities of our opponents."

"Huh."

"Also, while the Kikaichu are ectotherms and do not require much nourishment, I do not feed them to excess, and they will soon hunger. Shortly afterwards, they will be noticed."

"Oh. So how much time do we have?"

"A day at least. Two at most," Shino answered. "It depends on the awareness of the host."

"Two days?" Kiba asked. "That's plenty of time! We'll be in the tower before your last bug even gets hungry!" He looked at where the fence disappeared into the trees on both sides of them. "Right now, the teams are probably still near their gates, like us. Hey, Chouji!"

"Yeah?" Until then, Chouji had been munching away, content to let Shino and Kiba plan.

"Left or right?"

"What?"

"Left or right? Do you want to attack the closest team that-a-way, or _that_-a-way?"

"Uh—uh—right! No, left!"

"Right it is!" Kiba looked up at the trees. "Hey, Akamaru! It's time to go! And if you don't leave that bird alone, we're leaving without you!"

WWW

"ECHO!" Hano shouted into the trees. The trees didn't echo back. "Man, the acoustics in this place are terrible. No wonder this place is called the Forest of Death. The sound dies here like nothing else."

"And all this time I thought it had something to do with people dying," Kaya replied. "Also, keep your voice down. We don't want everyone to know that we're here."

Hano frowned. "Uh, I hate to break it to you, but I think they already know, because either we're here, or we've dropped out of the exam, and that wouldn't be any fun at all."

"No, not here, the forest, but right here, here."

Hano looked around. "Here is the forest. I don't know if anyone's ever told you this, but sometimes you say things that make no sense at all."

Kaya shook her head and looked up at the tree Haku had climbed to look around. It was weird how he did it. He just put his feet on the bark and walked upward like gravity had shifted for him. It was a basic chakra molding technique, he had explained. Some people, especially in the Leaf, learned it before they could even walk on water.

Kaya frowned. In the Hidden Mist, she'd rather be able to walk on water than climb trees, but here, in the middle of the forest without a lake in sight, everyone else would be fighting in three dimensions, and they would still—

"BORING!" Hano called out. "Still nothing."

"For the last time, would you cut that _out!"_ she snapped.

"_Out…out…out…_wow, Kaya, that was pretty good."

Kaya forced her eyes shut to calm herself. "Look, even if you don't care about getting killed, would you at least—"

"Haku's back."

"What?"

Haku landed on the ground beside her with as much sound as a rain drop.

"Did you find anything?" Kaya asked.

"I think I found a stream some twenty minutes to the west. We may be able to follow it all the way to the tower."

"Let's get going then," Kaya said. "I'd hate to run into an opposing team and realize that none of my water jutsu work."

Haku nodded. "Also, I doubt that many teams have brought five days of water. When they get thirsty, they'll have to come to us."

"Excellent! We're going to get to be crocodiles!" Hano exclaimed.

Kaya frowned. "Why don't they just take water from the air? It's not like we're in a desert or anything."

"You'd be surprised how few people bother to learn that jutsu," Haku answered. "They'd rather carry a canteen around with them all day and hope it lasts, it seems."

Kaya thought about that and shook her head. "I'm never going to understand these people."

WWW

The one who called himself his brother looked at him, as if to speak, then glanced at the one who called herself his sister.

"So, uh, Gaara…" Temari began.

_Kill them! Kill them both!_ That was all it took. As though the one who called herself his sister could read his mind, she fell silent.

The desert Garra wore on his back sometimes seemed heavier than the earth itself, but right now it felt like the desert was carrying him. "We're wasting"—_kill them now!—_"time here," Garra said. "Let's go."

WWW

He followed, as he always did. Hoshui followed, and Orochimaru led. Orochimaru made the Sound a village to be respected and feared, and Hoshui watched the world tremble. He would continue to follow through the little tests and twisted games. He had won them all so far, and he was still alive.

Oto came first, no matter the cost. And if that meant slaughtering a few unskilled strangers, then the price was truly cheap.

"Whoa, we got company," one of the grass nin said. He was masked.

"These guys are fast," a second shinobi said. "I didn't expect to even fight another team for a few more hours." He grinned wolfishly. "I feel a record about to be broken."

Hoshui looked at him indifferently. "Normally I would reprimand you for showing Orochimaru-sama such disrespect," he said, "but at this point there would be little point. This will be over quickly."

The grass kunoichi—black hair, tall, the leader Hoshui guessed—mouthed the word Orochimaru and paled, but her teammates didn't recognize the name and charged like fools.

It was over in an instant, as Hoshui had promised. The young fool probably didn't have time to realize he was dead in the instant Hoshui drove his fingers into the masked one's chest, directing the blow up under the genin's ribs and into his heart. He flipped the body into the face of the second. The genin never saw the blow that crushed his throat. Hoshui turned to find Orochimaru had tripped up the kunochi as she tried to run. More accurately, he cut off her legs.

"Did you see that?" Orochimaru chuckled. "She didn't even call a retreat, she just bolted, hoping that her teammates could stall us. Ah, sweet teamwork. Reminds me of myself when I was a genin." He casually swatted away a kunai she threw at him. "It always amazes me how long someone will struggle in a hopeless situation. You have no legs, child, what good will it do? I remember doing this with butterflies as a child. Have you, Hoshui-kun?"

Hoshui watched the grass nin as she tried to crawl away. He reminded himself, forcefully, that Orochimaru-sama was on the verge of conquering death itself—that he dedicated time, effort, and not inconsiderable skill to the glory of a small hidden village in an insignificant country. His…indulgences…were not so great.

Hoshui knelt and broke the second genin's throat, ending his thrashing for breath. "No, I cannot say I have. I seldom had the time or the patience, and never both at once," he answered.

"They would struggle until they died, but they never gave up. It was _fascinating_. But you have a point; I really don't have the time." He drove his sword into her heart. Her body trembled and stilled.

Hoshui wiped off his fingers on mask's shirt and picked out the team's earth scroll. "Best of luck pretending to be a genin," he said, tossing Orochimaru the scroll.

"I was never good at pretending to be a genin," he snorted. "Even when I was one." Orochimau knelt beside the woman's body, gathering a brief burst of chakra. An ignorant observer might confuse what happened next with a healing jutsu for its surgical precision. That could not be further from the truth. Orochimaru pressed his fingers over the jawline, the forehead, eyelids, then simply pulled back the woman's face before he moved on to the next. Exposed bone remained behind, bloodless as a manikin.

What was left in Orochimaru's hands was, for all intents and purposes, a fully functional face. The kinjutsu left nerves and minor muscles intact within the finished product. A particularly subtle seal allowed it to flex and feel almost as well as the real thing, once keyed to a host chakra, and would last nearly sixty hours.

Hoshui turned to leave, then hesitated. "Orochimaru-sama, it has occurred to me that on the verge of the invasion, our…inside man is rapidly becoming…expendable."

"You don't like him?" the snake sounded very amused.

"I don't trust him. If he wanted to, he could go to his withered relic of a Hokage right now and tell him everything he knows, and he could pretend to be nothing more than a double agent," Hoshui said. "If he hasn't already."

"Now why would dear Kabuto-kun want to do a thing like that?" Orochimaru had started working on the last face.

"Konoha is his home," Hoshui said. "He may have conflicting loyalties, friends, he even has students here. There is a…biological advantage for an organism to sacrifice itself for its offspring. This is more apparent for semelparous organisms, but it is true for humans as well, and it doesn't take much to adapt that instinct to sensei to student."

"Only if you're sentimental," Orochimaru said derisively.

"My point stands, Orochimaru-sama," he said. "As long as he has a way out, he cannot be trusted."

"If you dislike him so much, then kill him," Orochimaru said with a shrug. "If he's stupid enough to get himself killed, then he really is expendable, and I'll find someone else to pick up the slack. But know this, Hoshui. Kabuto doesn't have a way out." Orochimaru smiled and added softly, "No one does."

"I understand, Orochimaru-sama."

"Oh, and one more thing, before you go."

"Yes?"

"We passed a lovely shrine on the way here that I'd like you to desecrate. Leave the bodies there, and be sure to get some blood on the Buddha."

"That seems…audacious," Hoshui said with a frown.

"Perhaps, but I haven't seen my dear student in years," Orochimaru replied with theatric melancholy. "I must be getting…sentimental."

WWW

a/n Sweet! I'm done! Do you ever have those days when you're half way done with a chapter, and then your flash drive disappears? No? Oh, well never mind. Thanks for all the people who are still reading this.


	6. In the Desert

Konoha no Mai

Chapter Six

a/n I own nothing besides my imagination, which I treasure like a golden fork.

In the desert  
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,  
Who, squatting upon the ground,  
Held his heart in his hands,  
And ate of it.  
_In the Desert-_Steven Crane

It was amazing how much of a deal people made out of the chunin exams. Anko got a whole month to set up just a third of it! A whole month! Seriously, who needed a whole month to do anything? Of course, she forgot about it until she saw a bunch of foreign genin wandering around, but the hardest part was printing off the waivers and setting up the scrolls. Everything else was trusting kids with more knives than brain cells to do what they did almost passably.

"Anko!" an ANBU member in a bear mask called. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but bad news."

They always came with bad news. They never came with good news, like that she was getting a raise, or that she was being sent on a mission to the Hidden Village of the World's Most Comfortable Couches, or that her sensei had died a horrible and painful death. _Now where did that come from?_ Anko thought, rubbing the back of her neck. "Can your bad news wait till after lunch?" She was celebrating her last day off for a while the traditional way, with food.

"Can it ever?"

"Fine, fine, lay it on me," she relented as she stuffed some dango into her mouth. "Whump huffumed?" She swallowed. "What happened?"

"We found the corpses of a team of genin."

"Yeah? Well they don't call this place the Forest of Death for tourism. Besides, that's what the waivers were for. The lawyer nin can never touch us."

"Anko, this is serious. You _will_ want to see the bodies for yourself. There's something…odd about them."

"Alright, alright," she muttered. "Man, the corpses always turn up when you're eating."

She followed quickly after the ANBU, stuffing the last few dumplings into her mouth on the way. She was hoping to take a nap after lunch, but by the time she handled whatever nonsense had happened now, she'd have to head over to the tower to greet the genin. On the other hand, odd corpses might be fun.

A small Buda statue stood painted red with blood, and three corpses lay facing it on their bellies as though paying black obeisance in an unholy ritual.

"Well, this is nasty," Anko said. "Let's see, a lot of these cuts haven't bled a whole lot, so they were inflicted posthumously. Not the prettiest form of decoration I've seen, but not the worst. I'd say they were killed somewhere else and dragged over here for display. If they died in the exam, whoever killed them would drag the bodies out in public because they wanted to…they wanted to, I don't know." She kicked over a corpse in frustration. "I'm not an autopsy expert." The corpse had no face.

"Oh…oh no." She dropped down and checked the precision of the cuts of the skin, of the facial muscles, of the—"No!" She stood back, clutching at the scar on her neck, the thrice-cursed memorabilia her sensei left her—_tear it out, cut out the poison, a bloody hole could not burn worse_—and searched the pockets for identification. "Get some ID's for the other two," she instructed calmly. Why was she so calm? She wanted to vomit, to laugh, to scream, _to hunt him down and tear him limb from limb, rip out his heart and burn it to ash, and—_she took the ID cards from the ANBU. They all looked familiar. They were all one team, from the exam.

Anko looked off towards the Forest of Death. _Death comes for everyone._ "Inform the Hokage immediately," she said. "There's something in my forest. He'll know what it is." A laugh fell from her mouth that she didn't feel. "Maybe you'll get him to use his crystal ball for something useful for a change." The ANBU nodded and left.

Anko held no illusions about what would happen. If he was half as strong as he used to be, if he were on his death bed…she had fantasies, yes, but no illusions. On the other hand, Orochimaru wasn't the type to go to the throat when he could have fun instead. _Arrogance._ He was proud enough to walk off a cliff and be surprised that gravity had the audacity to pull him down. And if she could get him to underestimate her enough to let his guard down…

Anko realized that she was grinning. Or was it a grimace? _Get out of my forest._ She almost laughed. She wanted to puke. Her scar burned like a snakebite.

WWW

Three Naruto clones darted ahead through the trees, checking for traps the same way a man's shins check for hard objects in the dark. Behind them followed Kimimaro, as silent as a ghost, and the real Naruto, eager to take on the whole world or anyone else he could find. Hinata took up the rear. She didn't know how often a Hyuuga took the rear of anything, but she was…a special case.

The sun flared red in the west on their first day in the Survival Exam. The dwindling sunlight burst through gaps in the trees, and Hinata wasn't sure how much longer they would go before they stopped, or if they were going to stop at all.

"Hold on," she said weakly as she stopped. The others waited for her as she activated her Byukagan. There were always more leftover traps than she could keep track of, but anything alive outshone knives and tripwires. "I see someone! A kunochi." She had seen her before. "From Konoha."

"Where?" Kimimaro asked. "Is her team with her?"

Hinata shook her head. "She's alone. Right over there." She pointed through the trees. "She's coming towards us."

The kunochi came into normal view and stopped fifteen meters away. To run if she had to? Or was she long ranged? She was a year older than them, and from Neji's team. Hinata repressed a shudder. If it were Neji in front of them, Hinata would be trying to get her team to run.

But she didn't run. She didn't even have any killer intent, like she was going to attack. She just smiled and said, "Hey. Fancy meeting you here."

Kimimaro tensed and his bones shifted beneath his skin, ready to sprout, and Naruto fished a kunai out of his pouch, but Hinata deactivated her Byukagan. If they won or lost, she would not make the difference, and she was wasting her strength staying activated.

"Whoa, hold on a moment!" she called out, holding her hands up to show she was unarmed, but if anything she seemed more amused than frightened. "I don't want to fight you, and you don't want to fight me."

Naruto looked at her, then questioningly at the kunai in his hand. "I don't? I think I kind of do, actually, and we'll have to fight someone sometime this week, so…"

"Sorry, kid, but I don't have a scroll," she said like it was obvious, like they should have already known, and gave Hinata a look.

Hinata cursed herself for not checking, but it matched her stance, neither aggressive nor afraid, and besides, she felt no lie. "She's telling the truth."

"If you are not here to fight," Kimimaro asked, "why are you here?"

"Oh, you know, exploring, looking around, seeing who's doing what." She grinned. "I'm Tenten, by the way."

"My name is Uzimaki Naruto," Naruto declared boldly.

"Kaguya Kimimaro."

"Hinata."

"Hyuuga Hinata, unless I miss my guess," Tenten said.

She nodded. "Neji is my first cousin." She waited for the contempt, the bitterness, or any other expression to show what Neji had said about her.

Instead, Tenten gasped. "No way! I didn't even know he had a cousin." Well, that was not exactly surprising. "You know, I thought he was acting odd when he was talking about the rookies. He was really firm about not attacking anyone younger than us." She laughed. "I just assumed he wanted a challenge."

Wait, Neji was being protective? _Neji?_ _Protective? _Of _her?_ If she were drowning, she'd be surprised if Neji would do anything besides watch, if even that. _That's not what she said._ Neji didn't mention her at all, just the rookies in general. Maybe there was some other rookie he was looking out for? No, that wasn't like him either. Maybe he really did just want the challenge. He had enough pride to satisfy any clan.

"Hold on just a second!" Naruto spat. "I didn't join this exam just to be _coddled_ by you _upperclassmen!_ You can tell that to this _Neji _guy_,_ and send him over here and I'll give him the _challenge_ of his life! I don't need any _special treatment_!" He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at Hinata. "And she doesn't either!"

Hinata opened her mouth to protest, but shut it quickly. She felt her heart turn to water and her blood to ice. A wave of killer intent washed over her, like hunger, and winter, and the darkness between the stars. She fumbled through her hand seals to activate her bloodline. It wasn't coming from Tenten. She looked through the dark forest. The empty forest. She felt so cold.

"I don't see anything."

A blast erupted from beyond her view. The earth burst open and trees shattered. She screamed.

WWW

Anko didn't know which hurt worse, her burning scar or the open hole in her left hand. The scar pulsed in resonance with the departing Sannin, aching up to her skull and down her spine, but it wouldn't make her bleed to death. She cut a strip from her tan jacket and awkwardly wrapped a bandage around her hand. It sucked.

"_I can't thank you enough for staging the exam in a place like this,"_ Orochimaru had said after he trounced her—trounced her! There was no other word for it. After all this time… _"I knew you'd end up doing something useful if I let you live long enough."_

"_What do you even what here? You left! Why can't you just _stay_ gone?"_

"_My dear little Anko, is that any way to talk to your sensei? Maybe I just wanted to visit you. I see you haven't forgotten the forbidden jutsu I taught you, you naughty girl."_

"_Sensei?" _she snarled. _"You are not my sensei. You are a _cancer!_ Just when we thought we were done with you, a rotting tumor comes out of nowhere! I was done with you! Why can't you just _die_?"_

_Orochimaru pulled off the skin-mask he had stolen from a hapless genin and revealed his own ageless face. "I will never die, child. And how can I stay away, when there is such sweet harvest here?" He reached out and caressed her curse seal with a touch that made her want to scream. "Already I found a child who has shown more promise than you ever have. If he's very lucky, he might even be alive tomorrow."_

_Memories of pain flashed through her. Pain, screaming in a nightmare, trying to wake up if she wasn't already dead, and a frigid tundra of betrayal. And Orochimaru had bitten someone else. "You sick degenerate piece of—"_

"_Of course, even if he dies, I still have two faces left, and the night's still young." _

"_No," she whispered._

_He laughed, a depraved crackle like someone was dying. Or about to. "Maybe I'll get lucky, and I'll get all three. They are the future, you know, the rising generation. And I do like having…options."_

"_No."_

_Orochimaru pulled another flap of skin out of his pocket and pressed it against his face. This one was a kunochi, with long black hair and skin like wet paper. "I owe you oh, so much. This would have been slightly more difficult if the children were…supervised."_

And then he left. She could feel him gone by the way her scar throbbed less. She could find him with her eyes closed if she wanted to, for all the good it would do. Anko knew of only three people in the world who could take Orochimaru one to one, and two of them haven't been seen in years and the other was the Hokage himself. She'd need a team of at least twenty ANBU for him to even take them seriously, and by the time she got enough people together, he'd be done and gone.

No, there was nothing she could do to stop him. If there was, she'd be dead. She could only hope that whoever he was after would get lucky. They had a pretty good chance of that, actually, nine in ten of getting lucky, and only one in ten of surviving.

WWW

_I'm…alive._

Kimimaro sat up. _Of course I'm alive._ He looked around at the wanton destruction. The ancient trees lay in pieces like broken porcelain, and whatever had hit them had gouged out the earth like an open wound. He jumped out of the way as a large snake lunged at him. It looked large enough to swallow him whole.

"In the face of such deafening ruin," he said aloud, "any intelligent dumb animal would have fled. What are you still doing here?" A bone spear sprouted from his palm. The snake lunged again with its fangs bared. Kimimaro jumped up, pushed himself downward from an overhanging branch, and plunged his spear into the snake's brain. "A question for another time, I suppose."

He noted with disgust the blood and brain fluid that dripped from his spear. He scanned the trees for his team and heard someone screaming. Another snake—about the same size as the one that had tried to eat him—pursued that other kunochi, Tenten.

Kimimaro hesitated. His team was hit by a powerful ninjutsu, long ranged too, if Hinata couldn't see it. It probably took a lot of time to get it ready, and their enemy couldn't have been able to hit them if Tenten hadn't stalled them. On the other hand, Kimimaro knew nothing about long ranged ninjutsu, Tenten got hit too, and if her teammate had attacked them, he'd be helping her instead of letting her get eaten by a snake.

He stabbed the snake and pinned it to a tree. Tenten turned around in midair and threw four metal disks through the snakes head. "_Snakes," _she panted. "Why _snakes?_ I would have been fine with giant scorpions, or flying sharks again, but…_snakes_?_"_ She noticed Kimimaro as he pulled his spear out of the creature's tail. "Thanks, by the way."

"Do you know what hit us?" Kimimaro asked.

She shrugged. "Some long ranged ninjutsu. Beyond that, I'm a taijutsu specialist, so I can't help you."

Kimimaro examined the animal. "I was attacked by one just like this moments ago."

"Yeah? They make'em big here apparently. Half an hour ago I ran into a tiger the size of a house."

"Yes, but"—a scream in the distance. Kimimaro bolted towards it.

Naruto had a snake coiled around him. "You'll let me go if you know what's good for you!" he threatened. The snake opened its mouth. "No one, and I mean no one, eats Naruto!" The mouth closed around him. "I hope you choke!"

_Too late!_ Kimimaro frowned. He couldn't just kill the snake now. He'd need to eviscerate it. He'd need his sword. Where was Hinata? _Protect them all._

A blur smashed into him, a blur with arms and legs, punching him, behind him, in front of him. Before he could as much as get a decent look at his foe, a kick knocked him off his feet and into the trunk of a tree. Several of his ribs had cracked and one of his arms.

"I suppose you're the snake charmer," he said calmly as his bones reformed.

The kunochi's black eyes glittered from across the clearing. She wore tan over black and had a thick rope tied around her waist. She bowed with a flourish. "I am indeed. And I suppose you are the leader of this merry band of fools."

The giant snake behind her that had eaten Naruto was joined by another, and the two snakes watched them as an audience. Kimimaro guessed that the second had eaten Hinata. Could the grass nin control large animals? If she had brought them with her, he would have noticed. They could be summoned, he supposed, but could you summon more than one thing at a time? He didn't take his eyes off the woman, but judging by the clink of metal behind him, Tenten had not run away. He respected that.

"Tell me, young leader," the woman said. "How long do you think you can last in a snake's stomach before its stomach acid kills you?" She paused. "I really don't know, to be honest. They usually suffocate first."

Kimimaro pulled out a cloth to clean off his spear before reabsorbing it and pulled out a sword. He couldn't read much in her face that hung to her head like wet paper, and he was much worse than Hinata at reading body language, but she didn't seem surprised at his bloodline. If her stance changed at all, she seemed eager.

_If you seek death so earnestly…_no, even using only taijutsu, the woman was holding back. Kimimaro could defeat her, but it would take time that he didn't have. And then there was the rest of her team as well, whoever had used that ninjutsu in the beginning, and maybe another shinobi was controlling the snakes, or at least had summoned them. He realized bitterly that he was so certain his own taijutsu would be enough, he hadn't bothered to learn much else. But no, if he couldn't beat him fast enough, he could go around him and…_right. I can't defeat him, but I can defeat him and his two snakes._ Kabuto-sensei always encouraged the unexpected. That wasn't his strong suit either. He couldn't rely on Tenten too much. He didn't know her abilities, and he could not depend on her to stay. That left only one option.

His opponent waited patiently. She had all the time in the world.

"Would you be interested in a trade, snake charmer?" he asked. "My teammates for my scroll. I can't pass the exam without my team, and the scroll is what you are after, no? Or do you feed people to serpents recreationally?" He prayed that his opponent needed an earth scroll.

"I'd rather do both," she admitted. "And if I let you give me your scroll, I wouldn't be able to pry it from your cold, dead fingers."

Kimimaro held his blade to the scroll. He could shred it in an instant. "You have two options. That's not one of them."

The kunochi spoke slowly, as though to emphasize his advantage. "Tempting, tempting, but you have one scroll and I have two of your teammates. That hardly seems fair, don't you agree?"

Kimimaro shook his head. "I will protect them all or avenge them fully."

"A man of extremes?" she surmised.

"I don't compromise."

She shrugged. "What the heck, it's been a long day. Toss me the scroll and I'll have my pets vomit."

"And I should trust you to keep your word? Besides, if they have already suffocated, they are worthless." _Tick, tock._ "Fine. Give me one of them, I'll give you the scroll, and then you give me the other." _And then I'll kill you and leave your corpse rotting in the sun._

"And I should trust you to keep your word?" she mocked.

"I have given you my _word,"_ Kimimaro said firmly. "You will get no better."

_Tick, tock. Tick, tock._

"Well, alright then." They may have well been trading cards. "Which do you want first? The little boy or the little girl?"

"The little girl."

"Ladies first, is it?" she sneered. "How…chivalrous." One of the snakes convulsed and regurgitated Hinata. She lay on the ground, covered in slime. She didn't move.

Kimimaro froze. _Protect them all._ Kabuto told him…_Vengeance is a poor substitute for victory, but if I must…_

"Odd, they usually last longer than that," the kunochi said. "Don't worry, I'm a professional." She walked over to Hinata's motionless body, and kicked her in the side.

Tenten tensed behind him. _Kill him!_ his blood roared. _For the honor of your people and the glory of your clan—_Hinata coughed. Kimimaro relaxed slightly. _Half way there._ Hinata stumbled to her feet, took one look at the snake and it's master, before she wobbled over to Kimimaro.

"Kimimaro, what happened? I was eaten by a snake, and—where's Naruto?"

"He's in the other snake."

"What?"

"Is he still alive?"

She activated her Byukagan. "He's alive, but I don't know how much longer he can last."

"You have the girl, young leader," the snake charmer said. "Will you give me the scroll, or will there be…blood?"

_There will be enough blood to drown in, _he thought, but his opponent probably thought the same thing_._ She had said the last word with a grin. With her, the latter was compulsory. She would kill them for the sheer pleasure of it—_"Why would I want you to give me your scroll, when I can pry it from your cold, dead fingers?"_—Kimimaro was sure of it. He'd known enough bloodthirsty killers to recognize one. He had no reason to keep his word, except his word alone. But then again, it was just a scroll.

"My name is not young leader," Kimimaro said, ready to throw the earth scroll. "My name is Kimimaro."

Tenten leapt in as he threw it, spinning as the arc of her decent took her off-center. A Kunai trailing an explosive tag darted out, so quickly Kimimaro almost missed it. Distracted by the tossed scroll, the grass nin couldn't have had more than a moments warning. But Kimimaro saw the tall ninja blur a moment before the branch was consumed by flames and smoke.

Not that Kimimaro was standing still. He had seconds, perhaps mere moments—he was airborne before the fire died, a projectile flying towards the snake that had stomached Naruto. The blade in his hand twisted—his wrist in an iron grip, he caught a glimpse of the grass nin's eyes as he slammed down onto a branch with all the force of his arrested flight. He had the satisfaction of eliciting a surprised grunt from the Kunoichi as he used this momentum to vault over the restraining arm, bringing a hand that sprouted bony thorns up to slash the wrist that trapped his own.

His vision went white. Then black, then returned and he was flying. He tasted blood—stars danced in front of his eyes from the blow. The Kunoichi was below him now, leg extended from the kick that had launched him skyward.

Kimimaro turned his legs, twisted, and brought his feet under him, landing on the underside of another ancient branch. The Kunoichi moved, throwing kunai and running up the trunk towards him. Tenten stood with Hinata, too far away to do much. Perfect. It meant he was free to fight to his full capacity.

With a shrug, he slipped off his shirt, bone swelling and blossoming across his chest. He pivoted, a pirouette as he threw himself at the Kunoichi—a thorn-covered whirlwind. A blade on his shoulder encountered resistance, the sharp sound of metal against bone. Kimimaro's leg lashed out, growing blades- but it did not connect. He had to lean back as a swipe from the kunoichi aimed for his face connected. The blade glanced off his subcutaneous armor, leaving a line of blood under one eye. Kimimaro had to backpedal and raise his sword to block the follow-up that would have blinded him.

He grimaced, but not because of the pain. The snake charmer was faster than he could see, so fast she made him look like he was standing still. _But can you move faster than I can think?_ There was a pattern to his attacks. She attacked straight, feinted, dove right, swung under the branch, attacked from the left, ducked under the counter, darted clockwise behind his sword arm, and kicked him in the left shoulder before getting some distance to repeat. _Do you move faster than you can think?_ Kimimaro considered. Or was she not bothering to think at all? Either way, as long as he could predict her opponent, he didn't need to be faster.

The kunoichi darted forward, even as Kimimaro spun, using the action to disguise the movement as the blade switched hands.

A meaty thunk as Kimimaro bunched and extended, warm washed over his arm up to the elbow.

A look of shock etched itself across her face. No sound came out, but hot blood flooded out of the wound, spilling over his sword, his hand, and sleeve, leaving a dark…_brown_ trail. The mud clone collapsed and splattered to the forest floor.

Kimimaro whirled around, scanning the trees. The same trick wouldn't work twice, and now she'd take the fight more seriously. But no, the snake charmer wouldn't attack from any position she could be seen. When she struck—but could Kimimaro even be certain that she would? Or would she attack one of the others while he was distracted? No, she had already disregarded the others nonthreatening, so that left—

"From below!" Hinata yelled.

Kimimaro jumped from the thick branch a moment before it shattered like glass.

"Kimimaro, your name was?" the grass nin asked, giving all of them a dismissive glance. "I am God."

The dust and splintered wood floated in the air, and the sun had set entirely.

WWW

a/n _Hah! And you thought I'd never update again! Did you see the fight scenes? I have actual fight scenes now, something that I've been avoiding since I realized that I suck at them. That hasn't changed, but Racheakt started writing them for me. Why is Tenten here? Well, in canon, Lee ended up with team seven, and Neji had a brief run in with team ten, so I figured, why not? Also she barely gets any screen time. _


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